Reprints and Collections
READING Robert Lynd's Essays on Life and Literature, a new volum.! in Everyman's Library (Dent. 4s. 6d.), I have been thinking about a change in journalism which has become increasingly apparent during the last ten or fifteen years—I mean the lamentable declin:. in the number of literary essays intended for the general- reader. They have not, of course, died out altogether, as followers, for example, of Marginal Comment in the Spectator rejoice to know ; but those who were brought up on the essays, or the near-memory of the essays, of Robert Lynd, E. V. Lucas, Hilaire Belloc, G. K. Chesterton. Harold Child. Stacy Aumonie.., Augustine Barrett. Basil Macdonald Hastings and many others, wiU agree that the change is a historical fact. More newsprint might remedy it to some extent ; but newsprint is not the whole of the trouble. The writers I have mentioned wrote—usually with a mild and mellow Horatian wisdom —for a large class of professional and leisured men and women who could be relied on to follow literary or classical allusions (if not too abstruse) and to appreciate a well-turned phrase. Their essays were civilised adornments of a cultured and fairly settled society ; yet they were neither " highbrow " noc "lowbrow," for they were the work of writers who took no cognizance of that comparatively recent and, as I think, disastrous cleavage, but who invited every passer-by, who had the time and inclination, to share their dis- coveries and rejoice in the good things of life. Sociologists, economists and historians may best be able to explain the decline ot the essay ; personally I feel keenly this impoverishment of "the public stock of harmless pleasure."
Those who share this feeling will be grateful to Messrs. Dent for recognising Robert Lynd as worthy of the Everyman's Library, and will be glad to read him on Aunts and Bed-Knobs and Shy Fathers as well as on "Dr. Johnson and Company" (the title of his lively book on the Johnson circle which has wisely been -included entire). For those who prefer in their essays something more donnish and a little sharper to the taste, I commend F. L. Lucas's Studies French and English which now appears in Cassell's Pocket Library (6s.). These essays are well informed and very well written. They remind us that the art of the essayist still flourishes in college courts and gardens. Read Mr. Lucas especially on the genius of France and on "Modern Criticism." In between come Ronsard, Montaigne, George Herbert, Crabbe, Beddoes. . . .
As I had not hitherto got beyond the first few pages of a novel by Miss Ivy Compton-Burnett, I decided when I saw the reprint of A House and Its Head (Eyre and Spottiswoode. 10s. 6d.) that I would read it from cover to cover. This turned out to• be an even bolder decision than I had anticipated, an act of faith com- parable to an amateur's first approach to a bed of nails. I was particularly disappointed that I could not possibly agree with the pronouncement of a well-known critic, quoted on the dust-cover, that "her characters have more wit than any other collection of characters "one can think of since Congreve " (give me The Impor- tance of being Earnest, every time). Miss Compton-Burnett is a serious and fastidious artist, but to me the processes of her thought are as remote and cold as the surface of the mooa. If it were not so flippant and familiar I might have regretfully murmured, after reading her book, some words that are often heard on a current radio programme: "It was agony, Ivy." Anyway, I certainly felt like sending for the literary equivalent of "young Dr. Hardcastle," and so I looked up what Mr. P. H. Newby has to say about this author in a booklet on The Novel 1945-1950 just published by the British Council. I observe with gratitude that Mr. Newby concedes that the novels are "difficult," but he goes on to declare that "the reward is great indeed" and that two of her books "are the only fiction published since the death of James Joyce about which one can be reasonably sure it will be read a hundred years hence." Read by whom ? By a small circle of intellectuals corresponding to the clique that enjoys it today ? I doubt if even this is "reasonably sure." If any story of Victorian domestic tyranny is going to survive until 2051, why should it not be The Way of All Flesh, which I suspect is a more convincing book than any Miss Compton-Burnctt has written on this theme ? And may we not hope that a "classic," even in 2051, will be compounded of something more than arid and intensively self-conscious cerebration? I remember the con- clusion of Fritz Lang's film of the future, Metropolis: "Mediator between hands and brain must be the heart."
An interesting reprint is that of Mr. T. F. Rcddaway's book on The Rebuilding of London after the Great Fire (Edward Arnold. 25s.) which was originally published by Cape in 1940. This thorough account of a long and involved undertaking has been well produced and is illustrated by maps, portraits, engravings and drawings. It is strange that no contemporary artist left an impression of a scene at the rebuilding—of the lines of stakes standing in the vast blackened area, of the groups of workmen busy on the new founda- tions, of the surveyor discussing details and often settling disputes between neighbours there and then. In a fresh introduction Mr. Reddaway contrasts the situation after the .Great Fire with that in London after the War of 1939-45, while in an appendix he takes pains to demolish the legend that Wren's plan for the rebuilding of London was accepted by King and Parliament and only defeated by "the narrow selfishness of the citizens." The Cresset Press has published revised editions (10s. 6d. each).of Volumes III and IV in its excellent series of" Introductions to English Literature." They are Augustans and Romantics, 1689-1830 by H. V. D. Dyson and Professor John Butt, and The Victorians and After, 1830-1914 by Edith C. Batho and Professor Bonamy Dobree (who is also the general editor of the series). These books are very good value for the money ; I doubt whether a student could find anywhere more sensible, succinct, readable and balanced introduc- tions to their subjects than they offer. I particularly admire the comprehensive bibliographical notes and the discerning attention
which is paid in them to the smaller fry. DEREK HUDSON.
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