One part at least we may seriously regret that Flaubert did not take up again at the time when he could hardly go wrong and that is the part of Mme. Renaud. It is unlike anything in his period of mastery, even Mme. Arnoux; it is remarkable even as it is; and it has capabilities of being made very remarkable indeed. One of the slips of the novitiate is a sentence in the "wind-up" of the book to the effect that he "doesn't know" whether she took another lover or not. This is plumply inconsistent with a paragraph just before, and more subtly with the whole conception of the character. But that conception, worked out magisterially, would have given us a heroine most strikingly contrasted with Emma Bovary, but as true to nature, though perhaps less common in it; a type "athirst and amorous," but with no temptation to promiscuity; constant in passion, but not passionate in the other sense when the lover becomes inconstant; acquiescent in the shutting of the volume which had remained unopened for so long and had been turned over so eagerly. And there are the outlines of it here already. indefatigable in his efforts to reproduce natural sounds, As for Henry, he is what the vulgar would call nowadays a difficult proposition. Except for the utter humanity of which Flaubert already had the command, though he did not quite know how to use it, Henry is uninteresting. If we put morals aside-and there would have been no need to put them aside at all if convention had not imposed itself-he has every chance in his association with Emilie Renaud; and he only uses it so as to show that he was worth no chance at all-that his talent for life and love has not been put to use and increase, but simply exhausted. In this there is nothing unlikely, nothing untrue; but once more the conception is not thoroughly worked out. Jules is only shown "in the making "by alternate raisings and droppings of the curtain. If you want to know what he came to, you must look, not to any character in the author's later books, but to the whole of those GEORGE SAINTSBURY. books themselves. Nell' alta notte sento tra queruli as representing the cry of the cicada. But "Va! va! THE LESS-KNOWN PASCOLI A E le galline cantavano, Un cocco ecco ecco un cocco un cocco per te ! But for all his preoccupation with the external aspects of nature, Pascoli was no Alexandrine. He can enter into the heart of things, can interpret the most delicate shades of feeling and idealize the world presented to him by his senses. Indeed, his profound interest in Nature gives his relation with her a peculiar intimacy. He is continually establishing closer communion between her life and his own. In the quaint, almost trivial" Passeri a Sera," in which he is far from appearing at his best, he imagines the birds expressing their gratitude to the farmer for all he does for them by building a house for them to shelter under the eaves or sowing grain for them to stealin fact almost offering up an evening prayer to him. Unlike Leopardi, Pascoli looks upon Nature as the kindly mother. This is nowhere better brought out than in what is, to my mind, one of the most charming of the poems in this volume" Psyche." Pascoli's training and tastes were above all things classical. Not only had he sat at the feet of Carducci at Bologna, but he succeeded him in his professorship. As is well known, he won the prize for Latin verse at Amsterdam on more than one occasion. A poem such as his "Phidyle," inspired by the ode of Horace beginning, VOLUME of selections from Pascoli that does i miei gerani più non hanno che i becchi di gru occur continually. Country life is the chief source of his dai monti azzurri, per le valli cave; Cælo supinas si tuleris manus Nascente Luna, rustica Phidyle, might be a Latin version of one of the "Myricæ," so completely does Pascoli retain his individuality as a poet when writing in Latin. Naturally classical influences can be traced throughout his work, but the Poemi Conviviali," of which "Psyche" is one, are deliberate attempts to reproduce the spirit and poetry of Greece. Psyche has already lost Cupid, but Pan comforts her with his music and helps her to perform the tasks laid upon her. Finally she goes to sleep by the fountain. And then there are those new onomatopoeic words, such E Pan allora un dolce che tu piangesti a quel pensier di morte lo stesso pianto, così dolce, o Psyche! Pascoli has already emphasized the identity of love with the desire for death, which recalls Leopardi, in "Solon," the first of the "Poemi Conviviali." For him they merge in the forces of nature, symbolized in Pan. As Psyche sleeps a voice fills her with fear of the "vortice del nulla' she sees, but another comforts her, showing her how to prepare for her journey across the Styx. She has only to shut her eyes and sleep and she will see Love. She does its bidding and "Pan l'eterno t'ha ripresa, o Psyche, though he continues to pasture his flocks on the earth above her, as before. The classical restraint and the delicacy of the whole give it a charm of its own that harmonizes well with Apuleius. With this poem we may contrast the tendency to dwell on the outward, material aspect of death as exemplified in that characteristic poem, La Voce.' More than once the voice of the poet's dead mother has saved him from suicide. But she is in no way etherealized in his eyes. He is acutely conscious that she comes from the grave, from the mouldering earth. Voce d'una accorsa anelante, che ai poveri labbri si tocca per dir tante cose e poi tante; ma piena di terra ha la bocca. turi tric bec livi bec ear fee at fol of Perhaps it is the tragedy of his youth that makes Pascoli turn so continuously to his own childhood. “La Tessitrice "is known to refer to an early love, which has however become at most a faint memory. The poet never married, living with his devoted sister, Maria, so that there had been nothing in his private life to break the thread of his early recollections. "As I have not changed these early feelings of mine, I sometimes ask whether I have lived at all," he says somewhere. The murder of his father, followed by the leaving of the old home, the early death. of his mother, and the long struggle with poverty overshadowed his whole life. "All the world is orphaned and beggared, as if they had killed not merely the poet's father, but the father of the universe; as if an unknown power had robbed it of its God," says Borgese. The famous Giorno dei Morti " belongs to the Myricæ," but we see here the Cavalla Storna," the fine, but much debated poem in which Pascoli's mother goes down to the stable at dead of night to try to find out from the mare, the only witness of the crime, the name of the murderer. In "L'Aquilone he envies the boy who dies young, before he has learnt to miss a mother's care; and we see the same idea in "Giovannino," where Pascoli finds his childish self complaining bitterly at not being able to enter the cemetery where lie his mother and brothers and sisters. Pascoli had Wordsworth's reverence for the vision of a child. "Poetry consists in finding " how shall I put it ?-the smile and the tears that lurk in things," he says. This is the privilege of the two eyes of a child, gazing simply and calmly across the dark tumult of the soul. And it is this gaze that the poet must endeavour to recapture. Pascoli considers that man's guilt, and not Nature, is the cause of the evil in the world, and this is strongly brought out in Nella Carcere di Ginevra," where he pleads for Luccheni, who murdered the Empress of Austria. The son of an unknown father, he had been driven from his country. If only he could have forgiven the wrongs he had suffered instead of trying to right them by murdering a sister who had also suffered! If only he could have learned to love and forgive! Instead of this he has committed the worst of all crimes, and the poet wishes that he might find the peace of death instead of being forced to live on with the brand of Cain upon him. Hatred is foolish among shadows that vanish so quickly as men, whether in a crowd that rises in rebellion or in a king who imprisons. It is mercy that man owes to man; even to kings; even to thee, O Luccheni." Love and sorrow are, in fact, the cardinal points of Pascoli's poetry— these and the sense of the mystery of life that seems to pervade it in every detail, and here finds expression more especially in the rather crude allegory of "Il Libro.” Pascoli's inspiration is never long sustained. He appears at his best in a short poem like "La Quercia Caduta.' He defended his insistence on detail by maintaining that it was a poet's duty to talk of finches and sparrows and hawks, of beeches and larches and oaks, instead of generalizing them into birds or trees, and to bring out their distinctive features. Perhaps his inability to reach the comprehensive vision of a Carducci or of a Leopardi, whom he criticizes for his generalizing tendency, is partly the effect, partly the cause of the intermittent character of his gift, his tendency to labour a point to excess. his very uncertainty and unevenness give him something of the character of a precursor, as Croce saw and as Cecchi has insisted; for his work has the suggestiveness of one moving in worlds not realized, groping for the truth that always escapes him. L. C.-M. Yet List of New Books Prepared in co-operation with the Library Association. The method of classification adopted is a series of groups roughly corresponding with the Dewey Decimal System, the sub-classes being indicated, for the benefit of librarians and others familiar with the system, by the class-numbers given at the end of each entry. The first numeral in these represents the main class, the second one of the subdivisions, and so on. Those works in the List which appear most suitable for purchase by Public Library Authorities are marked with an asterisk. 100 PHILOSOPHY. Marett (A.). LIFE'S REALITIES. Skeffington [1919]. 7 in. 170.4 62 pp., 2/6 n. This quiet, reflective autobiography of a woman brought up in the country, who passes through a London Training College, teaches in a Yorkshire school, breaks down in health, and settles to a life of retirement, reveals a cheerful, patient, affectionate character, and may be a message of comfort and encouragement to many readers. Walker (William). IDEALISM. Heath Cranton [1919]. 8 in. 130 pp. index, 3/6 n. 141 The Rector of Pattiswick, in spite of a few verbal slips, gives a very clear and intelligible outline of the history of idealism. In his first book, Philosophical Idealism," he studies the development of the idea from pre-Socratic to modern times; in the second, Practical Idealism," he shows how it has influenced the life of men and peoples. His own attitude is eminently practical, and his concluding chapter depicts a future built upon " the revealed ideal of Christianity," absolutism and encumbering restrictions being, he hopes, for ever cleared away. 200 RELIGION. Montgomery (Right Rev. Henry Hutchinson). MUSINGS ON FAITH AND PRACTICE ("Longmans' Pocket Library "). Longmans, 1919. 5 in. 207 pp., 3/6 n. 204 Bishop Montgomery was until recently the secretary of the S.P.G., and these Musings" were published in the Mission Field between 1916 and 1918. They deal briefly with such subjects as Spiritual Leaders," Reincarnation,' Religious Intensity," Training Apostles,” and “ Mestrovic's Crucifix." 300 SOCIOLOGY. Fyfe (H. Hamilton). THE MEANING OF THE WORLD REVOLUTION. Palmer & Hayward [1919]. 7 in. 242 pp., 335.7 "" 3/6 n. The Revolution is the cataclysmic process through which the world has recently been passing, the process that culminated in the great war. Its effect, which must be gradual," is "the end of the ruling classes," the exorcising of "the curse of industrialism," the closing of "the artificial gulf" between the classes and masses, and the end of kingly rule." Mr. Fyfe analyses, in the ethical and emotional spirit of a Langland or a Rousseau, the ingrained follies, vices, and formalisms of our old civilization, denounces System the Foe," and proclaims hopefully the new formula," which is that of "Mystic Christianity.' His book is a new statement of Christian Socialism. Howe (Frederic Clemson). THE LAND AND THE SOLDIer. Fisher Unwin, 1919. 8 in. 207 pp. app., 8/6 n. 333.1 The U.S. Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, who is the author of many books on town-planning and the problems of the modern city and of democracy, here makes a reasoned appeal for the colonization of the land. He writes especially on behalf of the man with little capital and the soldier with no capital at all, and shows by the example of Denmark, Australia, America, and other countries how farm communities, organized or aided by the State, might reclaim uncultivated lands, provide a future for the returned soldier, and bring about the " redemption of farming," the waste of agriculture being at present colossal through the survival of obsolete conditions. Mr. Howe reviews the various forms of land tenure, and concludes in favour of Turull (Paul M.). LA NUEVA REVOLUCIÓN. Barcelona, " and his scrupulous honesty is shown by the omission of a Poems Newly Decorated ("Monthly Chapbook," no. 3, vol. 1.). Poetry Bookshop, 1919. 9 in. 27 pp. paper, 1/ n. 821.9 Eleven poems reprinted for the amusement of Messrs. Lovat Fraser, Rupert Lee, and John and Paul Nash, who are responsible for the new decorations." Mr. Fraser, who illustrates all but three of the poems, has a pretty, florid style which suits such pieces as Beaumont's Song for a Dance," T. E. Brown's "Vespers," and the Chloe and Euphelia Ode of Matthew Prior. But when he illustrates Since there's no help, come let us kiss and part," as though it were just as pretty, frivolous and florid as Prior's ode, we feel a certain irritation. After all, Drayton's sonnet is a serious, passionate and dignified poem, and to illustrate it by a picture of two little people in fancy dress mopping and mowing at one another is absurd. Mr. John Nash's decoration for William Allingham's little poem A Memory is a charming piece of work, and the most interesting of these drawings. *Sieveking (L. de G.). DRESSING-GOWNS AND GLUE; ed. by Paul Nash. Palmer & Hayward [1919]. 10 in. 47 pp. il., 2/6 n. Griffin (Gerald). ESSAYS ON COMMON TOPICS. Heath Cranton POETRY. " 821.9 There are introductions about the verses, by G. K. Ches- English Narrative Poems. With an introduction by Sir "" 821.7-9 895 Po-Chü-i claims half the space in Mr. Waley's book; the other half is filled with selections in prose and verse from seven other authors. There are some very delightful drinking songs by that subtler Anacreon, Li-Po : The words of the Nineteenth Century" should be added When I am drunk, I lose Heaven and Earth. And at that moment my joy is great indeed. MacColl (Dugald Sutherland). BULL; and other war verses. *Watson (Sir William). THE SUPERHUMAN ANTAGONISTS; and other poems. Hodder & Stoughton [1919]. 8 in. 102 pp., 6/ n. " 821.9 In some six hundred heroic lines Sir William Watson relates the conflict of the superhuman forces of good and of evil, personified in the old Persian myth of Ormazd and Ahriman. This, the chief poem of the book, will stand well among his clifflike, longer works. The stateliness of his rhetoric, the steep Perfection" of his verse, to borrow his own phrase, sound more dignified, more monotonous, more unexciting, in days when traditional canons are most honoured in the breach. But if there is nothing very modern in his poetry, it is something to have one worthy exponent to prove there is no real rupture of continuity between our literary past and present. Philosophical poetry always tends to be unexciting; yet, though the gigantic abstractions make no personal appeal to the reader's affections, the narrative of their struggle is kept interesting. The next longest poem, Americans, Hail! is a fervid exhortation in rather chilly blank verse; and The Unreconciled," a similar but more imaginative adjuration to Ireland, couched in hexameters each preluded with an upbeat, as sonorous and monotonous as Sir William's best, and more English than the classical The last-named and other occasional pieces conclude the book. FICTION. Aikman (Henry G.). THE GROPER. New York, Boni & Liveright, 1919. 7 in. 286 pp., $1.60. " 813.5 Mr. Aikman's first novel is a narrative of the successive disillusionments of an educated, but totally inexperienced idealist, who leaves his native town to "seek his fortune in Detroit. There he becomes, in turn, a salesman for a rascally estate agency, an employee in a dry goods store, an owner of property, and president of an automobile company-in which the wealth he has amassed vanishes into thin air." At the end of the book the "Groper" is reconciled to the girl to whom in early days he plighted his troth. The story has plenty of incident, and is not without power. Goodchild (George) and Mottram (Maurice). "Old Sport": the romance of a warhorse. Jarrolds [1919]. 8 in. 249 pp. il., 7/6 n. " Dedicated to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, this pleasing story purports to be the autobiography of a young horse who, after passing through the hands of good and bad owners, has a prolonged experience of active war service, is wounded, treated at a hospital behind the lines, and finally taken back to the home of his beloved old master. Wemyss (Mrs. George). ORANGES AND LEMONS. Constable, 1919. 7 in. 253 pp., 6/ n. "Shan't if I don't want to "(" Shant" for short), otherwise Elsie, is a spinster four or five years old, who is quite an important character in this story, the heroine of which, Diana Carston, stays with a rich bachelor uncle in Scotland, where she is surrounded by a circle of suitors. They include a very minor poet," a politician, a curate, and an A.D.C. to Diana's father. The reader will derive entertainment from the light task of discovering which individual is the happy man. 920 BIOGRAPHY. 920 Franqueville (Sophia Matilda Palmer, Comtesse de). Ridding (Lady Laura). SOPHIA MATILDA PALMER, COMTESSE DE FRANQUEVILLE, 1852-1915: a memoir. Murray, 1919. 9 in. 389 pp. il. pors. index, 16/ n. Daughter of the first Earl of Selborne, and wife of a member of the haute noblesse of France, the subject of this biography was a staunch Anglican Churchwoman, who did very useful work as Organizing Secretary, for the diocese of Winchester, of "The Central Church Committees founded in 1894; showed keen sympathy with the French clergy and sisterhoods at the period of the disestablishment of the Roman Catholic Church in France; successfully filled the rôle of a great lady" at Bourbilly and Passy, and was particularly beloved by a host of relatives and friends on both sides of the Channel. It is well said that the Comtesse was a pioneer of the Entente Cordiale between France and England," and Lady Laura Ridding's memoir of her sister will be acceptable to a large circle of readers. Frederick the Great. "" Young (Norwood). THE LIFE OF FREDERICK THE GREAT. Constable, 1919. 9 in. 441 pp. por. maps, app. bibliog. index, 21/n. 920 A summary of the career of the second Frederick, of whom a far from flattering portrait is drawn. That he "gave several exhibitions of cowardice," that hypocrisy and fraud were outstanding features in his character, that he had no moral code," and that Frederick was what we call a bad man these are among the conclusions expressed by the author. *Robertson (Right Hon. John Mackinnon). Bolingbroke Fisher Unwin [1919]. 9 in. 266 pp. AND WALPOLE. 920 chronological table, index, 12/6 n. The author of these able studies lays stress upon the fact that the issue of political problems always emerges in life as a conflict and an adjustment of wills; and a highly necessary preparation for the clear understanding of politics is a realization of the personalities and circumstances associated with past struggles. Hence the publication of the work before us, in which an admirable chapter on The Social Evolution follows the author's luminous discussion of the two statesmen and their policies. " HE FIRM of JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS, Publishers, Booksellers, Librarians, and Stationers, carrying on Business at 61, St. Vincent Street, Glasgow, of which the Subscribers JAMES MACLEHOSE and STEWART DOUGLAS JACKSON were the sole Partners, has been DISSOLVED as at July 31, 1919, by mutual consent. Mr. JACKSON will CARRY ON the BUSINESS of JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS for his own behalf, under the Firm name of MACLEHOSE JACKSON & CO., and will COLLECT the DEBTS due to, and DISCHARGE the OBLIGATIONS of the late Firm of, JAMES MACLEHOSE & SONS. 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