NOVELS.
THE MOON ENDURETII.•
MR. JOHN BucHaN has done well to collect the tales that he has published of late years in the pages of Blackwood, for they were one and all worth reprinting. Few writers have a wider range of interests, and it is as welcome as it is rare to find an author who can discourse on subjects so widely divergent as fishing and party politics, mountaineering and metaphysics, Jacobite romance and the psychology of heredity. But it is one thing to have a wide range of intellectual interests ; it is another and a harder thing to use the medium of the short story in such a way as to bring them home to the reader with dramatic appropriateness and real literary accomplishment. The Stories are excellent in themselves, unfamiliar in their motive, rich in the element of surprise, and skilfully conducted to an effective climax, while the moral or significance is driven home in each case by an epilogue in verse, which serves at once as a commentary or summary and as a fresh variation on the original theme. But the best way of conveying a notion of Mr. Buchan's admirable versatility is to give a brief out- line of some of his stories. The first is an historic fantasia dealing with the latter and ignoble days of the young Pre- tender. A young diplomat, while making the grand tour, encounters, in Tirol, Prince Charles travelling incognito with his (laughter. Though a supporter of the House of Hanover his chivalry is stirred by their forlorn state; he aids them with his purse and acts as intermediary when a deputa- tion of American gentlemen arrives to offer Prince Charles the throne of a new Transatlantic kingdom. Their readiness to embark on such an experiment after their successful struggles to break away from the English monarchic rule is a hard nut to crack, but Mr. Buchan is equal to the emergency, and the scheme collapses, as it was bound to, at their first sight of the Prince. They had come forty years too late to offer a crown to a broken-down drunkard. From the tragedy of Jacobitism in extremes Mr. Buchan switches us off by a sharp transition to a satiric political extravaganza of to-day. Ind Lucid Interval we see how a mysterious drug, administered by an Indian potentate with a grievance, worked havoc on a Liberal Cabinet, converting humanitarians into cynics and little Englanders into blatant Jingoes. Here the formula is familiar and reminds us of Gilbert's Palace of Truth, but the handling is full of humour and the satire thoroughly opportune. Recent events have shown that extremes meet in pr'ties as elsewhere, and that yesterday's pacificist may be the Chauvinist of the morrow. " The Lemnian," perhaps the most striking tour de force in the volume, recounts the heroic end of an islander who by accident fell in with the Spartans at Thermopylae, and though hating the Greeks as much as the Persians, out of what we now call the sporting instinct at once resolved to cast in his lot with the small battalions. Then in " Space " we have the strange • The Moon Bndureth: Tales and Fancies. By John Buchan. Edinturgh and London; Wm. Blackwood and Sons. [6a.] tale of a mathematical genius. who became obsessed with a new theory of space and the contents of the void. There are some notable sayings in this story of the borderlands of science ; the definition of the typical Cambridge-man as " dogmatic: about uncertainties, but curiously diffident about the obvious," and the description of the intellectual fear that finally proved the undoing of the theorist—" fear so sublimated and trans- muted as to be the tension of pure spirit." Mr. Buohan'e abiding love of the " land of the mountain and the flood" has never found happier expression than in the beautiful sketch of the wanderer who went by the name of "Streams o' Water,', who always avoided roads and always kept by the burnside. " Yeddie," the " Gangrel," is a sort of benevolent modern variant on the lymphati of the ancients. It was not by fear but by love of waters that he was possessed. Another example of Mr. Buchan's ingeniously romantic treatment of survivals is to be found in the weird story of wood magic entitled " The Grove of Ashtaroth." Here we read of an Englishman of Jewish descent who built himself a pleasure dome in Northern Rhodesia and fell under the spell of the old goddess of the East—a spell transmitted through Semitic blood during countless generations. But we have written enough to show the rich and varied character of Mr. Buchan's entertainment. It only remains to quote a few
lines from the charming opening poem, " From the Pentlands Looking North and South " :--
" 0 Thou to whom man's heart is known, Grant me my morning orison. Grant me the rover's path—to see The dawn arise, the daylight flee, In the far wastes of sand and sun! Grant me with venturous heart to run. On the old highway, where in pain And ecstasy man strives amain, - Conquers his fellows, or, too weak, Finds the great rest that wanderers seek Grant me the joy of wind and brine, The zest of food, the taste of wine, Tho fighter's strength, the echoing strife, The high tumultuous lists of life— May I ne'er lag, nor hapless fall, Nor weary at the battle-call . . . But when the even brings surcease, Grant me the happy moorland peace ; That in may heart's depth ever lie ' That ancient land of heath and sky, Where the old rhymes and stories fall In kindly, soothing pastoral. There in the hills grave silence lies, And Death himself wears friendly guise ; There be my lot, my twilight stage, Dear city of my pilgrimage."
We wish we had space to quote from the fine ballad, "The Gipsy's Song to the Lady Cassilis," the witty " revised version" of "The Shorter Catechism" on the theme "we're made alike o' gowd and mire." But the lines we have chosen are, perhaps, the best for our purpose, for they illustrate, far better than a reviewer can hope to in his own words, the curious blending of the mystic and the man-at-arms which lends so potent a charm to the work of Mr. Buchan.
Previous page
