Books
So THE COMMONWEAL November z6, 1924 BOOK S ore Obiter Dicta, by Augustine Birrell....
...He is no "man in the street," as regards literature, nor in fact an amateur nor incidental critic at all, but an accomplished nun of letters, who will probably be so known to a later generation, rather than as a barrister and professor of law, or even as a Chief Secretary for Ireland...
...The only fault I can find with Sir Leslie Stephen as a critic," Mr...
...These later Obiter Dicta seem more mellow, the outflow of a more comfortable mental wealth, than the more formal and set essays of the two earlier volumes...
...Apart from this assumption, not unnatural to a man of affairs to whom literature has been a side issue, and so declared —one has no quarrel with Mr...
...It is a model of clarity and development, as well as a valuable contribution to a period dufficult for the serious historian...
...Birrell, "Arnold never shed any tears over milk spilt by himself.—A poet does not know his business if he cannot make fiddle strings of other people's feelings...
...like other absorbing occupations and interests they daily bring consolation to thousands in trouble...
...I happen to like those moans, but I can appreciate Sir Leslie's not liking them...
...The best critics, as a rule, are professional critics, as the best baseball players as a rule are professional...
...Birrell is a lawyer and a statesman, a distinguished and substantial man of affairs to whom literature has always been but an avocation...
...New York: D. Appleton and Company...
...The study and the cloister, whatever their various drawbacks, produce a criticism and a religion snore searching, more thorough and more real, than do the market place and the street...
...I fail to appreciate," wrote in Leslie Stephen, "these musical moans over spilt milk...
...Unfortunately we must express some disappointment at the rather superficial treatment Mrs...
...and wherever his footsteps move it will be pleasant and profitable to follow...
...Among the poems is : beautiful tribute from Charles Phillips to his friend, Charles Warren Stoddard...
...They naturally would, and do...
...He states a fact about himself and states it accurately...
...Her style is that affected by the authors of Christmas gift books, full of an amiable chatter, where we might have information...
...His is a mellow wine and sparkling, "with beaded bubbles winking at the brim...
...Niles gives to this remarkable land and civilization...
...Birrell writes, "is that lie is so frightened of talking nonsense that he never reaches any altitude where the springs of knowledge amY Mr...
...Birrell, "puzzle Stephen's practical mind...
...Newman who asks the question, not I. Liteiatun'~should be takeal seiioualj hit no& too ieriousljr...
...So THE COMMONWEAL November z6, 1924 BOOK S ore Obiter Dicta, by Augustine Birrell...
...Birreil happily makes no promise that it will be...
...Arnold's religious opinions," says Mr...
...New York: The Century Company...
...ARTHUa COLTON...
...It is not necessary for us to take his literary work as lightly as he takes it...
...The range of his sympathies was evidently limited, but he knows what he is Saying...
...Literature and science are not small beer...
...Max Beerbohm's cheerful sequences with a Still More, and a Yet Again...
...But the remark is partly apropos of Sir Leslie's comment on Mathew Arnold's "melancholy vein that deplores the withdrawing tide of religious belief...
...painters of any note become nouns...
...But Mr...
...The first essay in this new Obiter, called Anti-humbug, is on Sir Leslie Stephen, to whom literature was a sole profession— as ascetic looking an intellectual as Mr...
...Colombia, Lani of Miracle:, by Blair Nile...
...his Dr...
...Blair Niles describes in her netv volume of wanderings—a country the exploration of which was an almost superhuman act in its conquering of the forbidding mountains and dominating the organized Indian nation...
...Nobody wants him less hearty and emphatic, any more than less pungently witty...
...but out of one's characteristics to compose a verb is a triumph quite occasional and peculiar.' Mr...
...Both quotations are characteristic...
...Birrell does not notice what he is saying...
...Before the days of 51mw and Chesterton he was making remarks as clever and dogmatic as theirs, and somewhat more amiable...
...Lytton Strachey, and a humbug hunter or claptrap shooter possessed of an aim rather more deadly and deliberate than Mr...
...The Emperor Charles IV, by Gerald Croveland Wal:h...
...New York: cribner's Son...
...3.50...
...whereas Mr...
...Birrell himself never reached any appalling altitudes, perhaps for die same reason...
...But another may be allowed to comment in turn, that Arnold did in point of fact shed as many tears as most poets over spilt milk of his own, and those same musical moans on Dover Beach and elsewhere were concerned with a personal as well as a world-wide melancholy...
...Many have achieved their adjective...
...He may yet imitate Mr...
...Birrell's off hand refutation is palpably erroneous in fact A bluff and portly manner is no panacea against talking claptrap...
...Hence the juristic term "Obiter Dicta," or casual side remarks, as distinguished from "Res Judicatac" the tide of another of his earlier collections...
...7.50...
...MORE Obiter Dicta is not a title that necessarily means the last if its kind, and Mr...
...The question, as asked by Newman, had a propriety of source as well as a difference in form, which it has lost in the transfer...
...He was at one time even aptheosized into a verb, "to birrell...
...IT IS indeed a land of miracles that Mrs...
...The professional critic is mc;c sure of his aim than the amateur or incidental critic...
...In thc fifteenth essay here, on The Quarterly Review and Literature, he writes—"As for consolation, who was ever con~kypnaUbeetof]iterature or.sdence...
...THE biography of this Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charles IV, through the tangle of intrigues and disorders of the fourteenth century, is very ably traced in this prize-winning Marquis of Lothian Essay of 5923...
...Sir Leslie is the sounder writer of the two, even though less casually entertaining...
...But for some reason or other, on some subjects like literature and education, there seems to be a common assumption that the man in the street, who comes forward with a hearty and emphatic—"Now let's get rid of claptrap 1," is incapable of claptrap...
...On the contrary they do not puzzle him at all, only he does not like them...
...Birrell's...
...2.25...
...His collected essays are in three substantial volumes, and no lover of letters should miss his books on Andrew Marvell and William Hazlitt, or any new volumes of Obiter Dicta which he may hereafter issue...
...The Catholic World (New York) for November, presents an unusually choice selection of features, among which there is an excellent biographical sketch of the late John Quinn, by James 3. Walsh...
...Her familiarity with the phases of native life seems more assumed than real to one who has lived among the Colombians...
...But," comments Mr...
...This is followed by an essay of fragrant pungency, the work of Hugh Allen, evidently an enthusiast in the vegetable garden, iizh the title of The Ancient and Honorable Onion...
Vol. 1 • November 1924 • No. 3
