| The
advent of a new story by a Canadian author has a certain
interest for those of our people who care about our
literary development. We have two or three strong and
promising prose writers, and now and then a clever story
is published, as for instance Miss Duncan's popular
book. I have just had the pleasure of reading a new
story by Miss Machar, entitled "Roland Graeme,
Knight," which is probably the best bit of work
that she has ever produced. Miss Machar's story is more
than clever, for it has a purpose, and a serious one
at that. It is a study of a well-worn problem, the labor
question, and the relation of the classes in society
from a Christian woman's standpoint. The book is readable,
well-written, and not so intense as many of its kind,
owing to a good substratum of common sense and a broad
human sympathy that save it from mere sentimentality.
But, with all its strong points as an earnest attempt
to portray the influence of religion as a social lever,
the book falls below the ideal as a literary achievement,
and there is not a spark of genius from cover to cover.
I would not accuse Miss Machar of plagiarism, nobody
would do so, and I believe her religious attitude is
her own, but anyone who reads "Roland Graeme"
will at once revert to "Nicholas Minturn"
and other similar stories by the late Dr. J.G. Holland,
which no doubt strongly appealed to her sympathies and
helped to form her social and religious attitude. There
is also a suggestion of "Felix Holt" in the
hero, with the exception that Miss Machar makes "Roland
Graeme" accept the cardinal truths of Christianity,
and that without giving us any analysis of his journey
in that direction. Miss Machar shows a woman's literary
weakness in being unable to keep her own individuality
out of her favorite characters, and in a contempt for,
and almost hate of, at least one of her evil characters,
whom in one place she verges on the hysterical in denouncing.
One would almost think that she had some person in mind
when she wrote. At the same time, what helps to spoil
the book's literary merit is valuable in giving us the
characteristics of a woman who will always be more human
and more interesting than any book she will ever write,
and whose work in prose and verse will be appreciated
and felt in so far as she puts herself into it. Miss
Machar, as far as I have seen, has no original creative
genius, but she has the literary desire strong within
her, and she has something else that goes with it, and
it is often more looked for in the passing literature
of to-day than mere creative ability, namely, a strong
and abiding interest in the social and religious problems
of our present humanity, which she has worked with some
force into verse and prose. In spite of these evident
limitations, Miss Machar's work will compare favorably
with much of that of the American didactic school, and
as a personality she is a woman whom all Canadians will
contemplate with respect and pride.
C.
Anyone
who possesses a copy of the shorter poems of Robert
Bridges has a source of pleasure which is sweet and
which will not soon run dry. It is a grateful thing
to find in these days, when verse is compelled to contain
so much of turgid personal experience, so much that
should have remained forever unsaid a poet who has a
pure and simple heart and a winning accent, who charms
by his idyllic grace and his unpremeditated happiness.
Such a poet is Robert Bridges, and to anyone who wants
to spend a pleasant hour with feelings similar to those
which the simpler pleasures inspire, I would say secure
a copy of this volume, which is published by Geo. Bell
& Sons, London. In the atmosphere which fills its
covers he will not meet with anything to startle or
confuse, but only tranquil shadows and quiet deeps of
thought. It is a country which reaches Landor's ideal:
"Where
every voice (but the bird's or child's) is hush'd
And every thought, like the brook nigh, runs pure."
Sometimes
the reader discovers a quaintness which reminds him
of William Blake, and often some passage which it is
not possible to scan, which does not conform to the
usual metrical laws. But if sometimes one can find a
little fault from over-sensitiveness of ear, the blemish
can be readily forgiven upon the very same page will
doubtless be some harmony that will chime the faulty
line into silence. I wish I had space to quote for the
lovers of poetry the two spring odes, "Invitation
to the Country" and "The Reply." About
the first there is a sort of homely joy in outdoor life
and in the beauty of growing things and things commencing
to grow that makes one feel the ardency of spring and
the ideality of it. It leaves the conviction which the
poet himself expresses:—
"Content,
denied
The best,
in choosing right;
For nature
can delight
Fancies unoccupied
With ecstasies
so sweet
As none can
even guess,
Who walk not
with the feet
Of joy in
idleness."
In
"The Reply" the dweller in the town contrasts
his pleasure with those of his brother in the country
and finds himself also contented. But the poet's heart
is with the pleasures of the field, and he writes of
them with a sort of trust in their power to please;
as if, too, his words were not meant for any but himself,
but only intended to remind him that the world is yet
young and the heart can be kept so. And the essence
of his verse is that unexcited pleasure in life which
is the more lasting because it is contemplation, and
is based upon the eternal truths and upon nothing shifty
or compromising. So we get back, as it were, to the
springs of poetry, and see the beauty at its source
where the water is clear and flows limpidly with a small,
pure stream.
I
have loved flowers that fade,
Within
whose magic tents
Rich hues
have marriage made
With
sweet immemoried scents.
A
honeymoon delight,
A
joy of love at sight,
That
ages in an hour:
My
song be like a flower!
I
have loved airs that die
Before
their charm is writ
Along a liquid
sky
Trembling
to welcome it.
Notes
that with pulse of fire
Proclaim
the spirit's desire,
Then
die and are nowhere;
My
song be like an air!
Die
song, die like a breath,
And
wither as a bloom;
Fear not a
flowery death,
Dread
not an airy tomb!
Fly
with delight, fly hence
'Twas
thine love's tender sense
To
feast; now on thy bier
Beauty
shall shed a tear.
This
is one of Robert Bridge's most perfect lyrics, and there
are not a few of them as perfect. For such things we
will love him, and for such things he will be remembered
long after the work of many who now receive unstinted
praise for performances which cannot be ranked with
his shall be forgotten.
[S.?]
We
are reminded frequently in the customs of every-day
life of the survival of ancient ineradicable instincts,
which bid defiance to the influences of popular religion
and even to the actual articles of faith. One case—and
the commonest—is to be found in the ceremonials
connected with the burial of the dead. We profess to
accompany our dead to the grave in the hope of a blessed
connection, and the assurance of a future life of perfect
and eternal happiness; yet in actual practice we surround
death with every emblem of utter horror and despair.
Nothing can be more hideous or more dreadful than our
common paraphernalia of burial—the coffin, the
hearse, the palls, the black trappings—everything
but the pure white surplice of the minister.
Surely it
is not necessary in a philosophic age, when people are
beginning to realise with a sort of poetic clearness
their true relations with nature and life, that all
these horrors should be kept up. Whether we accept with
the mass of mankind the belief in a happy immortality
of the soul, or whether we refuse to busy our thoughts
with that great after-blank into which we cannot see
how we shall penetrate with profit, in neither case
will the sound-hearted man and the true lover of humanity
and life look upon death as in anywise a hideous or
desperate thing. The ceremonial of burial might be simplified,
and our emblems of ugliness and despair exchanged for
beautiful ones, indicative simply of love and a hopeful
sadness.
It seems to
me that the whole practice of burial, ancient and universal
as it is, might well give way to the much more beautiful
one of burning. I do not know whether the burning of
the dead is an old a custom as burial; but, at any rate,
the Greeks practiced it largely at all stages of their
history until the triumph of Christianity. Moreover,
there ought to be no offence in it to those who desire
that their bodies should be committed to the earth,
for it seems to me that the body reduced to a handful
of light ashes may be much more fitly buried than the
body in its entire and corruptible state.
L.
Now
that the rude season has wrinkled the barren earth,
and the tide of nature's life has ebbed lower with the
downward sap, the heart of man pulses with renewed heat,
as if he felt the need of the inward warmth that nature
has withdrawn. Here in our strong and bracing northern
land there is a glow and thrill in the sense of snow
and ice that is very gladdening to the heart of boyhood.
And I think that many a Canadian will echo the sentiment
found in the following song of the bleak months, which
the author dedicates at this season to the Canadian
boys, old and young:—
The
Song of the Bubbling Pot.
O
sing me the song of the bubbling pot
When the weather is cold and the kitchen is hot,
And winds outside are moaning;
When the summer is gone and the birds are fled,
And the leaves are shrivelled that late were red.
And the bee-hives are hushed of their droning;
O the crackle of wood
Does a boy's heart good
When the snowflakes the hay-cocks are hooding;
But better than all is the bubbling sound
That comes from the pot when the plate goes round
And rattles down under the pudding.
O
the keen, clear days of the chill-nipt fields,
Of the ponds all hidden in silver shields,
And orchards too naked for robbing;
When all the red blood of the frozen year,
That is shrunken in meadows and woodlands sere,
Through the heart of one urchin is throbbing;
As he whistles and lingers,
And blows on his finger,
Schoolward, when snow clouds are brooding;
But his steps grow quick and his heart gives a bound,
As he dreams of the pot and its bubbling sound,
Of the plate down under the pudding.
Manhood
has fame and knowledge and love,
The wide, wide wisdom of heaven above,
The lore of the rich earth under;
And the soul of the poet is wide in its range,
The spirit of woman surpassingly strange,
But the heart of the boy is a wonder;
In the chillest November
The years can remember
The boy-heart with blossoms was budding;
And we all look back to the old kitchen joys,
And the song of the pot and its bubbling noise,
Of the plate down under the pudding.
C.
Tennyson
is said to have done a very wise thing some time before
his death. Warned by the fate of Carlisle in the hands
of his biographer, Froude, he set to work and destroyed
everything amongst his papers and letters that it might
not be quite safe to place in the hands of an unwise
historian. The biographer of Tennyson will accordingly
have plain sailing. There will be nothing to perplex
his imagination or mar the perfect beauty of the structure
which he proposes to raise.
This is only
another example among many of the manly wisdom which
seems to have distinguished the great poet in all relations
of life—that wisdom which made it so very difficult
for newspaper men, portrait painters and sightseers
to get within shouting distance of him. All that kind
of people he abhorred, and it was not altogether safe
for them to approach his neighborhood.
There is only
one circumstance that detracts in the least degree from
our regard and reverence for the poet and the man, and
that is "the lord." It is a pity that they
could not have abstained from marring the noble simplicity
of Tennyson's fame by decking him with that incongruous
relic of decadent vain-glory. It was somewhat ridiculous,
and his reputation slightly suffered from it.
L.
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