A Most Excellent Don
Shuster, George N.
June 30, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 21 A MOST EXCELLENT DON By GEORGE N. SHUSTER IF THERE is...
...By ALFRED M. HITCHCOCK And with equal truth one may say that the echoes of prose linger because they peal and thunder again in writing equally Courses in composition, drill, and grammar made to radiant...
...Prepares for Caesar...
...Continued on Page 215) 5th Avenue 34th Street *The Oxford Book of English prose, chosen and edited by Arthur Quiller-Couch...
...It is quite enough to remember that for their comfort Addison plantedwas it elms?-in the neighborhood of Magdalen College...
...Does not the individual grow because the community exists...
...English prose is, and so a merciful cure for the disease of print...
...Our Don has spent his lifetime in its affectionate contemplation...
...Happily we all shoot at the moon A text made for modern boys and girls...
...More intimate knowledge has escaped me...
...Biters So Francisco ascend and look around from pole to pole, from the rising and the setting sun, from the north and from the sea...
...On read- precede the High School English Book...
...The electorate came-as those who were present will recall-pretty much from all over...
...ing an unctuous flight by John Donne, the mind is carried to Newman, to Richard Rolle, to Henry Vaughan, until all of them-the mystics who possessed the gift of speech--stand together against the background of eternal day...
...I have seen a great artist stand for an hour trying to give symmetry to the contents of a vase, and then abandon Colored Glass the task with an outcry of despair...
...but the large purposes of prose have not been, all these thousand Emphasizes arrangement and development of orderly years, as pale a target as the moon...
...What it proclaims has, perhaps, never been better HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY listened to and reported than by Richard De Bury : "In books 1 Park Are...
...practice, first of all, in gaining possession of subject matter...
...Perhaps all these were not highly intelligent literary critics, believing as they did that fiction was fancy rather than fabrication...
...A phrase of HIGH SCHOOL ENGLISH Walton's about the river sedge glides into Compton Mackenzie's impressionistic sketch of Cornish streams...
...But would it really do any harm to go back to Quiller-Couch's romances once again...
...Well organized in content and refreshing and stimulating in tone...
...There is, of course, a generous sprinkling A clear, fascinating story, which presents history as of Yankee passages, but they are such as any tyro might have a record of life...
...There is neither Poe, nor Harris, nor Cable...
...And how much more difficult it is to gather the most beautiful TeL WIS...
...June 30, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 21 A MOST EXCELLENT DON By GEORGE N. SHUSTER IF THERE is to be a place in paradise set apart for dons (and surely there will be, for who would presume to encroach upon their august quiet...
...By ARTHUR R. LEONARD Why should not one forgive, therefore, the comparative failure to choose from American letters what is most char- and BERTHA E. JACOBS asteristic of them...
...No other art is so complex and suggestive...
...priced at McCreery's...
...Now all of this may be the merest gossip, because we have been denied familiarity with rugged donnish actuality...
...I still seem to see the president of Wimbledon College, with a twinkle behind his horn spectacles, the tall, tanned young man who i was ever so deeply in love, and a certain maiden aunt who fl proudly laid claim to the achievement of having "discovered" Francis Thompson in a Boston horse-car...
...New York: The Oxford University r. Press...
...It is one thing to cherish memories of everliving books, and another to weave these recollections together in a kind of May-pole throng...
...the benedictions of the blessed...
...We have really been peering everywhere for a volume which would give, in dense and serried perspective, the patterns created by the handi- HAVE YOU SEEN THESE BOOKS...
...3.75...
...Of course, knowing as I do that he is wonderfully wise, I simply assume that he is princely...
...7000 of the subtler beauties of literature may be inferred, of course, from a mere thought of the dimensions of the project...
...149 New Mostp.ar St...
...despoiled by the long robbery An individual method text, covering the essentials of of puritanical change, but even so, fallow for the miraculous grammar and anticipating the sources of the most frefertility of a second spring...
...2451 Prairie Ave...
...That is not all one would have enjoyed getting, but noting the abundance of the feast it is better not to By CELIA FORD dwell on missing deliciousness...
...Is not one canvas of Titian JUNIOR ENGLISH BOOK hallowed by the shadows flung upon it by other pictures...
...Long ago, when literature was still quite content to be readable, is was voted in a happy conclave that The Splendid Spur and The Ship of Stars were among the best of tales...
...Sundry Suggestions for But "Q" is a don, as has been indicated ; and in fulfillment of his lofty function he presents us now with another of those The Gentle Art books which are commonly called anthologies.* What a pity of Keeping Cool that the savor of Greek has been annihilated by modern scientific curiosity 1 We are so busy labeling diseases and beetles that the mellow old Attic does not immediately suggest "a gather- Electric Fans ing of flowers...
...In short, you must take this book as an English manifesto, with FIRST LATIN BOOK some additions...
...Surely these phantoms of Stuart grace, these flashing young blades and their darlings, might do no further injury to the growing intelligence than to suggest, ever so mildly, that "the poet is a splendid wizard...
...June 30, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 215 (Continued from Page 213) The Oxford Book of English Prose satisfies what is commonly diagnosed as "a long-felt want...
...But is there anybody of importance who has missed altogether the pleasure of knowing "Q...
...and that-at least upon tradition-the native frivolity of the Cam is suppressed whenever they pass...
...What reason prevented our Don from opening his problems, special topics, brief biographies, and the likeeyes to Southern writing, much more nearly akin to the spirit aids the pupil to learn intelligently and effectively...
...So gently, unobtrusively, does "Q" go about his task that is only comparatively late that you realize how, underneath the massed suggestions of the gathered pages, a deeper purpose runs on its way...
...Not a line from Jefferson-not a word from Virginia or Kentucky...
...Apart from that, however, the knowing who are faithful to these constantly changing pages will never miss the glory of a strong voice...
...Dons and their ways are blissfully dream-like, rather than real, to most of us...
...sad always and yet noblest when quent errors in speech and writing...
...cherubim expand their wings, that the soul of the student may New York Best...
...craft of prose...
...Provides with ineffectual arrows," says Stevenson, justifying courage...
...This is the mystic thing which thrills all who STUDIES IN GRAMMAR sweep away transient sediment and discover "England"-soul By MABEL C. HERMANS in which the North and South were fused, in which the Mediterranean mingled with the Elbe...
...Meets cultural and historical I have a fancy that many will read and praise this book...
...It can be an excellent introduction to some understanding of what objectives...
...and, indefatig- BOOK ably renewed, the diction of Malory, of the Bible, of Burton, By ALFRED M. HITCHCOCK of Traherne, is as contant as the petals of the iris or the fuchsia's waxen glory...
...James McCreery & Co...
...Every dinner-table collec- Reed Porch Furniture tion of roses presents a problem that Da Vinci might have wrestled with-a problem involving insight into the separate These and many other aids to coolness are very moderately mysteries of flowers, and into the deeper holy awe of color...
...the fortunate among us may expect to meet a princely, wonderfully wise man who, if the heavenly dons prove unjealously aware of merit, will be the ruler of their demesne...
...6 Park St...
...habits of mind...
...Tests are available riotously merry, strangely wedding beef and Plato, ale and in pad form...
...Few people understand the art of culling Iced Tea Sets of flowers...
...Think of the word in the garden, where "Hot-a-kold" Vacuum jonquils and azalea are beautiful on a thousand stems, or Bottles against the bosom of a girl, her arms crowded with apple-tree bloom, and you will see at once that not everybody who rushes Auto Vacuum through the poets or the divines can give you a bouquet of Freezers unspoiled loveliness...
...of his book than anything else in American prose, is a puzzling mystery...
...A system of real study helps-outlines, culled...
...and though he has elsewhere said beautiful things concerning it-in From a Cornish Window, for instance-his celebration has never been so noble THE NATION'S HISTORY as now...
...that they are trained samplers of all good things, like hock and the periods of De Amicitia...
Vol. 4 • June 1926 • No. 8
