Sir
Roger—What have we here?
Giles—There is everything under the sun set down
with some show of reason; they run atilt at the world,
and treat men and manners as familiar as an old hat.
Sir Roger—Think you they protest too much? I like
a matter disposed bravely, but—
Giles—Methinks they have a genial tongue. Will
you hear them?
Sir Roger—Well, an’ it be not too long I’ll
have some sack, and you read on.
—
Old Play.
A
very singular book is Mr. Barry Pain’s “In
a Canadian Canoe.” Mr. Pain is a brand new English
humorist, or rather wit, for he is certainly not a humorist
in the true sense of the term. The full title of the
book is “In a Canadian Canoe: The nine muses minus
one, and other stories”; it is one of the White
Friars library of wit and humor, edited by Mr. W.H.
Davenport Adams. The first article, “In a Canadian
Canoe,” is a sort of dreamy irrelevant series
of allusions to the author’s experiences on the
Thames in a Canadian canoe, mixed up with a lot of other
ludicrously out of the way and equally irrelevant matter.
“The Nine Muses Minus One” is more forced,
and its fantastic alternations of pathos and burlesque
do not attract the imagination. “The Celestial
Grocery” is an enormously clever bit of work,
and even more whimsical and fantastic than the rest.
“Bill” and “The Girl and the Beetle”
are the best things in the book, and there are phrases
and incongruities of idea scattered about these sketches
which throw one every now and then into an agony of
laughter. But Mr. Pain has an extraordinary and disheartening
fancy for interweaving his mirth with psychological
subtleties, and driving all the wit and frolic out of
a sketch by ending it up with some dreadful and unexpected
stroke of pathos. In Mr. Pain one discerns traces of
Stevenson, traces of Stockton, traces of Mark Twain,
and this mixture is brewed up with a liberal allowance
of an odd and eccentric faculty of his own. His book
is ingenious, brilliant, witty, and the reader is occasionally
prostrated with paroxysms of laughter, but nevertheless
one wearies of it; it lacks the warm human sense; the
true touch of humor; it leaves no flavor of lingering
pleasure and sweetness upon the intellectual palate.
So far has pessimism darkened the spirit of our time
that even the humorist cannot bear to leave us in the
enjoyment of his drollery, but must poison the last
taste of it with some morbid sting.
L.
It
was a curious and uncomfortable experience of the Duke
de Levis when he presented himself at Abbotsford without
his letters of introduction. He, the representative
of the oldest family in France, lay under the suspicion
of being an impostor, and I fancy that the real tact
and kindness under such trying circumstances of that
great-hearted Walter Scott had more to do with the extravagant
dedication to him of the duke’s book than any
mere admiration for his qualities as a writer. This
is only a fancy of mine, however. There is something
about the idea of a duke astray in the world without
his credentials that is grotesque to say the least for
it. The human mind revolts from the position; would
there not be some mark of distinction, some authoritative
grace of carriage, some delicate and unmistakable aroma
which would mark him no matter where he had left his
“papers”? In vain the sentiments demand
this in the name of society. The sentiments may go on
demanding. The duke exists by reason of his documents.
Armed with these he limps into the salon on his one
sound leg, his weak soul wavering in his distorted body,
dangling his blase sentiments before a delighted and
captivated crowd. Without these he is the bagman in
masquerade, a fellow of the baser sort who would trick
society with his audacities. But let us do the duke
justice. He may have lost the vouchers for his aristocracy,
but he may be a man and a gentleman; he may have charmed
us with his wit, with the breath of his sympathies,
with the humanity of his candor; we may have exclaimed
time and again as we remembered his fine manner and
exquisite thoughtfulness, “What a splendid fellow!”
And then one dull day we find out he was a duke. Our
feminine relations would say, “I told you so,”
but would not the wisest of us say, “What matter,
it was the man we met and not the duke?”
S.
I
have every reason to remember the pleasant hours I passed
last summer reading “The Chavalier of Pensieri
Vani” by H.B. Fuller. The days were dull and almost
cold; the sea kept plunging under a mist; but this disastrous
weather was made bearable by this charming and spirited
book. Whoever wants a book to hand to his friend with
the words, “this is good, fanciful and humorous
and finely done too,” should ask his bookseller
to send for a copy. There is something of the whimsicality
of Sterne in the work, and the writer has that quality
called the “light touch.” In the story of
“How the Chevalier gained his title” there
is a fine description of the Chevalier’s organ-playing,
which is the best thing of the kind I have seen. The
Chevalier was a great organ-player and a ready improvisatore.
I am writing from memory, I have not the book before
me, and the titles of most of the sketches elude me
in the way peculiar to titles and other things, but
the general impression of a really delightful book is
strong in my mind, and, even if I cannot sketch all
Mr. Fuller’s characters and call them by name,
this is a work I may fairly leave to the readers I would
like to gain for him.
S.
A
good deal of interest has been taken in Mr. Arnold Haultain’s
suggestion in The Week that some Canadian publisher
should issue a memorial volume of contributions by Canadian
authors in honor of the Shelley anniversary. It is to
be doubted whether there are a sufficient number of
Canadian writers who would be naturally impelled to
produce enough writing of a high standard of excellence
to form the volume proposed. Of course we should expect
to find in the essays and poems, composing such a memorial
volume, the expression of a sort of religious enthusiasm
for the object, and most of the writing would have to
be done by the professed Shelley devotees.
There will
always be a class of minds—and I confess myself
to be one of them—who do not find themselves drawn
to Shelley in the intensest degree. As I read over and
meditate on those wonderful poems I find myself often
a little repelled by the absence of something, which
for lack of a nearer term I would call “the human.”
Shelley appears to us not as a normal being of this
world, but as a spirit, strange, radiant and inspired,
whose joy had in it the glow of an unearthly light,
and its gloom a shadow fantastic and without the bound
of mortal conception. The world and its life floated
before him not as the substance of reality, but a glorious
and awful vision, full of seductive vistas, peaks strangely
lighted, and gulfs of profound and terrible darkness.
We miss in him that earthly human heartiness and neighborly
warmth of touch which render the great passages of Shakespeare
so imperishably beloved to all tender hearts of men,
the quality that glows in Keats’ and Wordsworth’s
best, and lends the sweetest charm to the greater poets
of our own age.
Nevertheless,
even those who are not specially worshippers of Shelley
would, no doubt, have something interesting to say in
regard to him, and we have several writers who are avowedly
of this poet’s cult. Prof. Roberts would certainly
have something strong to say of the poet whom he is
said to look to as a master. Mr. Bliss Carman, who should
have been mentioned in Mr. Haultain’s brief list
of Canadian writers, has already written a beautiful
and original poem, which might form a chief ornament
of any memorial volume. The late Mr. Cameron of Kingston
also wrote an admirable poem on Shelley.
L.
The
February Fortnightly opens with a poem by James Thomson,
author of “The City of Dreadful Night.”
It is intensely gloomy. The author seems to speak to
us from his grave. The manner of the verse is the same
as in the poem the title of which I have quoted above,
the lines reminding us her and there of Rossetti. To
Canadians the most interesting paper in the number is
that of Francis Adams on “Some Australian Men
of Mark.” Mr. Adams is an uncompromising writer.
He has dealt with the social conditions of his country
with no desire to make them out better than they are,
and now the public men receive similar attentions. He
commences by saying that the athletes of Australia are
the only men known by name to the “general run”
of Englishmen. I suppose this may also be said of Canada.
But there is, or appears to be, a bitterness in Mr.
Adams’ tone which Canadians, and perhaps Australians,
will not feel when confronted by this fact. If it is
a desirable thing to have forced our existence upon
the attention of the mother country, it is no contemptible
thing to have done it with our men of muscle. But we
have to some slight extent done it by our men of brains
and that we are continuing to do it by our men of action
and by their trade and transportation schemes is a fact
incontestable. That we will continue to do so, as the
years go by, in an increased measure, is also indisputable,
but this is not the end and purpose of our national
life; the ultimate object of this is to build a nation,
strong, great and enduring. If, when this is accomplished,
we or our posterity discover that Canada, her public
men and her institutions are known and admired in London,
Bombay, Yokohama, Melbourne and New York, we will not
be surprised, and we will be careless of a fame we never
desired for its own sake.
S.
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