SNAP SHOTS
Middleton, George
Snap Shots Books, Art, Drama By George Middleten SUPPOSE you were cast upon a desert isle like Robinson Crusoe and managed to be able to save one book from the wreck—which one would you choose? A...
...It is obviously impossible to give even the smallest idea of the scope of this collection though one may gather from its size the vast number of poems brought together for the reader...
...Aside from its very essential democracy, the arrangement of the poems is the most individual thing to arrest attention...
...Stevenson has hit upon the very easy device of gathering them under general heads such as Poems of Youth and Age, Poems of Love, Poems of Nature, Familiar Verse, Patriotism, etc...
...Occasionally one comes across omissions which surprise, as, for example, in the selections of Meredith's Modern Love, the famous sonnet beginning "We saw the swallows gathering in the sky," which Swinburne ranked among the greatest in the language...
...Soon John Galsworthy, delighted with Masefield's work, made his acquaintance and showed his democracy by insisting and insisting to all England that here was a man to watch and admire...
...Since then Masefield's poems and other works have attracted steadily widening attention and his fame has spread as rapidly as ripples on the smooth surface of a pond where a stone has fallen...
...The author of the present volume has aimed not so much at telling the story of Livingstone as allowing that story to tell itself —consequently the work is a simple narrative of the facts of the life of a great man whose fame increases as time goes on...
...As he points out in his modest introduction, he has always considered the validity of the popular taste and, consequently, has endeavored to fasten upon the accessible page poems which haunt the memory but are not easily found...
...I recommend this most heartily to my readers who feel the need of verse and who wish to have at hand a larder to suit the taste of the moment...
...He was then but fourteen years old, and in square riggers he sailed over a great part of the world's navigable waters until several years later, sick and tired of the sea, he took to land to become a tramp...
...But he met the poet Yeats and they spent a whole summer loafing and talking in Devonshire, which was a mighty aid to the self-education John Masefield was acquiring...
...yet it is just to say, since he includes The Ballad of Reading Goal that these exclusions have been done in no small narrow spirit...
...for poetry fulfills its highest mission, while in the service of beauty, when it fills the need of the soul in its hour of hunger...
...Yon can readily guess it is the new anthology aptly called The Home Book of Terse (Henry Holt & Co., N. Y. C, $7.50...
...It is distinctly different from most books of a similar aim both in the amount of material and arrangement...
...Clever as a youth, he disdained school and books and frequently started out on long tramps without telling his folks where he was going or how long he would stay...
...Then he began to write verse and plays, some in verse, and stories that attracted the attention of the handful of modernists in lit-erary London...
...That is the main reason why this volume is destined to achieve wide popularity...
...In most cases there has been no difficulty in obtaining copyright privileges though some authors have apparently been unwise in not admitting themselves into this brilliant company...
...At last his family decided that such irresponsibility ought to be mended, and so they indentured him to the captain of a merchant ship for the sum of a shilling a month and other consideration, mostly of relief...
...Then he sailed over a great part of the world some more, then he became a tramp again, and there is a whole long gap of his history which is none too clear until we find him as bartender and bouncer in the Sixth Avenue saloon...
...Stevenson's task has been so monumental and he has accomplished it with such gratifying results that criticism of some minor detail is as carping as it is unjust...
...Any rigid form is open to objections though Mr...
...No wonder, then, that his new book, The Story of a Bound House and Other Poems, attracts the widest attention from those who in any degree are interested in the quality of present day literature.'' * * * THE LATEST ADDITION to Macmillan's series of popular priced reprints is The Life of David Livingstone, by C. Silvester Home, M. P. The publication of this book just now is a fitting tribute to the missionary, for on March 19th will be celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of his birth...
...And each of these has been subdivided further, so that in each group there are gathered together those which deal with the same shades of feeling...
...Of course, such a studied classification is at best only a makeshift, which the compiler himself generously acknowledges, but the more one studies it the better it seems...
...He has received the Royal Society of Literature's annual Edmond de Polignac prize of $500 for his poem, The Everlasting Mercy...
...Masefield," to quote from this article, "is but thirty-eight years of age, of English 'parentage and was born in Shropshire...
...It was a great joy to me to find, by way of comment, those inspiring lines of Richard Realf, beginning "Fair are the flowers and the children, but their subtle suggestion is fairer—" and also the beautiful poem of Laurence Hope entitled The Masters...
...One could easily call attention to individual poems, but if the reader does as I did and turn instantly to the favorites which have not met the eye in years, he will see the value of this book...
...that is, the compiler, Burton Egbert Stevenson, has not only selected the poems famous for their form and beauty but he has not neglected those which have sung themselves around the world and have lived because they were loved...
...In regard to those poets still living—and this collection very commendably contains many—he has frankly relied upon his own judgment since time alone can be the ultimate judge as to whether they will echo through the years...
...A book has come to my desk which tempts me for the honor...
...But Mr...
...Most of the poems, such as Wordsworth's Ode, have been printed in full, though, in some cases, he has been forced to omit extracts from many of the longer narrative poets...
...Not that it is one of the great masterpieces of literature, but because it offers untold opportunities for communion with much of the greatest which has been penned It is a large book of over 3,700 pages, printed dearly upon thin paper, splendidly bound and easily portable...
...Literary Notes "NOTHING MORE PICTURESQUE than Masefield's biography could be invented, even, say, by Jack London," says a writer in the New York Sun, who gives some interesting facts about the man whom he characterizes as '' the literary lion of the hour in London, and one of the most important figures in the literary world to-day...
...He has frankly been compelled to omit, also, some of the famous poems because they were too free for the family table...
...It is first of all popular in its appeal...
...In fact, by arrangement and selection this is by far the best and most comprehensive anthology in the English Language...
Vol. 5 • February 1913 • No. 6
