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CURRENT LITERATURE

I. History of English Literature. By ANDREW LANG. Longmans, Green and Co. 1912.

2. English Literature, 1880-1905. By J. M. KENNEDY. Stephen Swift. 1912.

3. Papers Critical and Reminiscent. By WILLIAM SHARP. W. Heinemann.

1912.

4. Studies and Appreciations. By WILLIAM SHARP. W. Heine

mann. 1912.

5. William Morris. By JOHN DRINKWATER.

1912.

Martin Secker.

6. Henrik Ibsen. By R. ELLIS ROBERTS. Martin Secker. 1912. 7. A History of English Prose Rhythm. By GEORGE SAINTSBURY. Macmillan and Co. 1912.

8. Essentials of Poetry.

and Co. 1912.

By WILLIAM ALLAN NEILSON. Constable

9. Studies and Essays. By S. J. MARY SUDDARD. Cambridge University Press.

1912.

10. The Three Brontës. By MAY SINCLAIR. Hutchinson. 1912. II. Memories of James McNeill Whistler. By T. R. WAY. John

Lane. 1912.

12. Recollections of Guy de Maupassant. By his valet FRANÇOIS. John Lane. 1912.

13. Studies in Arcady. Second Series. By R. L. GALES. Herbert and Daniel. 1912.

14. China Jim. By Major-General J. T. HARRIS. W. Heinemann. 1912.

E

SSENTIAL literature must of necessity be rare and cannot at once be recognised or acceptable. It springs direct from the mind of a man absorbed in his own feelings and ideas, and therefore deeply learned in what is common to humanity. It may proceed from a keen and solitary apprehension of one particular human province of experience, or from a profound and sympathetic comprehension of all. And like a drop of attar it faintly and gradually pervades the pages of commentary and criticism. It becomes the nucleus of a further literature of its own. Obviously, therefore, the more conspicuous publications of any brief period will be of a critical and biographical nature; studies of literature and

comparative studies of life, on the fringe of creative art as also upon the fringe of actuality. They will deal with material, for the most part, at least one generation old. Their office is to sift, to arrange, to classify. For the great majority of readers desires guidance, and is inclined to accept literature as it accepts many other fundamental things, more or less at second hand.

In such books the last few months have been prolific. And though few of them reach the level of work that endures because of the lofty spirit, the rich imagination that went to its making, and most of them tell the adventures of a soul among fairly familiar masterpieces, the significant feature of nearly all of them is none the less a certain energy and independence of view, or, in the unlovely jargon of the time, a tendency and drift towards the transvaluation of values. Names, aims, ideals-none is safe; all are on their trial. We become vaguely aware that new influences are at work; that conventions are very poor cover just now; that man is not at ease in the same old circumstances, beneath the same old restraints, and not yet fully articulate concerning the new; that insularity is a folly of the past; that existence may be a riddle with an entirely unexpected answer; and that literature, though its best must always remain the achievement of the few, is no longer the luxury but the necessity of the many.

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For this widest possible audience Mr. Lang intended his History of English Literature.' His desire was to arouse a living interest in the books of the past; and by so doing to induce the reader to turn to them for himself. No more in this than in anything else that he wrote is the sense of personality absent. He was the master of many and, for a literary man, of the most unlikely subjects. Fastidious and individual, he was often obliged by the very breadth of his interests, by the stubbornness of his material, to leave that idol of the true artist's heart, form, to take care of itself—a feat it usually accomplished with ease. He exulted in vigorous prejudices, delighted in treading, with wide-open eyes and a firm heart, obscure and haunted by-paths. Scornful of shibboleths, of new and highfalutin fashions, of pose, crankiness and dry formality, scrupulous as regards evidence, entirely open-minded as regards theories, he lived long enough to desire his ease in the task in hand and to earn the privilege of taking it. The ever-present

temptation of the littérateur to view the world of thought and action only through the blurred glass of print seems to have completely passed him by. A kind of gallantry like a song rings through this book; all the forlorn causes were Lang's; youth and poetry and the joys of romance; and his invaluable common-sense shines serenely above all. And though there are signs here and there that the desperate tedium, and even the vanity of the task, forced themselves into the consciousness of a most willing spirit, yet, just as often, the burden is wafted aside with a humour and whimsicality no ennui could long withstand. The book abounds in all the qualities that his name at once recalls both to those who delighted in his work and to those who temperamentarily enjoyed criticising its idiosyncrasies. As one gets on in life, one takes to' certain subjects and chooses for company thoughts, peculiarly one's own, that lightly come and go, like birds familiar with a welcoming nest. And every shady thicket of the journey is made happy by their presence. One particular phantom-Joan of Arc-shared Lang's solitude throughout this history. But he loved all the best things and idolised his chosen; he aimed straight for the man in the book, whatever century he belonged to; and men are our company here, not merely titles. His spirit never flagged; he never grew cold in interest; nor did his effort die down. He kept childhood in memory and boyhood too; and to imagination that is the very air of childhood, and to real things,' that are all the world to boyhood, he always bore enthusiastic witness, wherever he found them. His history, because it is based on a life lived eagerly and fully in all the most human ways, because it is lit up with a single-hearted devotion to man's chequered and heroic earthly story, is as good a book to read as it is a sound one to study.

Mr. J. M. Kennedy's English Literature' is of another temper and with a different aim. Its scope lies entirely outside of Mr. Lang's centuries, covering only the twenty-five years between 1880 and 1905. Of things so near home it is difficult to see the precise proportions. Mr. Kennedy's estimate of his period may or may not be just, it is certainly not sentimental. Melancholy, he considers, was the keynote of the last generation of English literature; its whole atmosphere yellow and jaundiced. One by one its most distinctive writers,

he points out, came to an unhappy end. Had the time not been out of joint, seems his paradoxical argument, men like Wilde, Dowson, and Lionel Johnson might have set it right. Had they been born in the time of the Renaissance or in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, they might have lived to rank on the same plane' with Tasso and Pascal.' Theirs was an age of reason, of 'sickly scientificism,' not of faith; and imagination flagged in a miasmatic air. But not only science and reason: Neo-Platonism and Romanticism were also the dominant religions and Pater was the High Priest. Liberalism and democracy were the battle-cries, classical ideals were disregarded, tradition was ignored, every writer was a law unto himself; and none therefore attained to that fine balance of mind which is the only defence and refuge of the too sensitive artistic temperament. The confusedness of this introductory chapter may be more apparent than real; the effect is at any rate that of an attempt to say too much and too many things in a small space. Mr. Kennedy's terms are somewhat elastically used, are made to serve his own particular purpose, and he constantly falls back on such a word as 'inartistic' to prove the absence of qualities imperfectly defined. His free use of of course' is a dangerous one. With nothing are we so little likely to agree as with that which is proffered under the menace of a ghostly bludgeon. 'It was an interesting period,' Mr. Kennedy concludes, with a hint of something between ennui and condescension, and the safeguards he suggests against the continuance of its evils are at least quite clear. To avoid its melancholy, to escape from its romanticism, whether it be Pater's or Zola's or Shaw'srather queer bedfellows-two things will prove of sovereign efficacy: 'an aristocratic faith, Catholic rather than Puritan or Non-conformist,' and the philosophy of Nietzsche. In 'the course of the next few years Nietzsche will beyond all doubt become a potent force in England.'

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Mr. Kennedy writes with a kind of dryness and aloofness. Burning admirations, ice-cold hatreds make excellent reading, but a serene and definite code and calm conviction of principles make better criticism. It is a pity, however, that Mr. Kennedy has dealt with only those authors who provide him with melancholy' data. A survey from another point of view, that dealt with the many representative authors of the

period who have been omitted here might lead to a very different conclusion. And there are distinct traces of a pronounced personal bias in this book. Mr. Kennedy's acrid belittlement of Mr. Wells as compared with his treatment of Gissing is a case in point. As regards Wilde and Mr. Shaw-indulgent subjects for the extremist-Mr. Kennedy holds the balance pretty true. And though he has dour things to say of the pessimism of his period, he is warmly considerate as well as just to the poetry that was its outcome.

First-hand recollections of Pater-the literary influence that Mr. Kennedy so much deplores-are to be found in Papers Critical and Reminiscent' by William Sharp. The volume is a collection that together with Studies and 'Appreciations' makes up a valuable body of criticism by a writer whose own contribution to poetry and romance was published under a pseudonym that as time went on stood at last for a kind of dual personality-Fiona Macleod. Whether either William Sharp or Fiona Macleod has made any enduring contribution to literature is a question that it is quite safe and easy to leave for Time's unhurried decision. 'Rest'less inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto 'present considerations seems a vanity almost out of date, ' and a superannuated piece of folly.' William Sharp accomplished what Matthew Arnold called very creditable 'journey'work,' though in his 'reminiscences' there is a tinge of affectation here and there. Fiona Macleod was the direct offspring of Celticism-a Celticism in her case somewhat rarefied, effeminate and over-emotionalised. But that this inspiration is still living and active is proved by the work of many young writers - Mr. Seumas O'Sullivan and Mr. James Stephens, for instance, and it can boast at least three poets unquestionably safe from oblivion, 'A.E.', Synge and Mr. Yeats.

'William Morris' by Mr. John Drinkwater and 'Henrik 'Ibsen' by Mr. Ellis Roberts are 'critical studies' taining sufficient biographical material to give them more than a purely literary interest. Mr. Drinkwater, himself a poet, has written a book almost from first to last one steady refreshing shower of appreciation. But praise to be profitable -to attract readers craftily to the fountainhead-must be discriminating. If Mr. Drinkwater errs, it is on the right side

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