phical, almost anecdotal. The same is true of Miss Bosanquet's Henry James at Work.16 The essay is too slight to help the student, though it is interesting to have a glimpse of the novelist busily at work revising his earlier stories in order to rescue ideas insufficiently developed, and to retrieve neglected opportunities for 'renderings'. In addition, it is certainly worth remembering that the philosopher picked up the nucleus for some of his best plots from the random conversation of his friends. The reader will find much more food for reflection in Maurice Hewlett's Letters.17 This collection reveals the spiritual career of a man who never rested, who always examined, explored, adventured, seeking to find his real self not only in the realms of art, but in the yet more hazardous and inexhaustible world of experience. Surely we have here the twentieth-century spirit in all its purity. If so the classicists will rejoice, for Hewlett confessed to Cecil Headlam,If any place, if any tongue can express what I feel and contain what I worship it is Greece'.

art.

But Hewlett really belongs to the last generation. For the greater part of his life he was a Victorian. Then let us take Flecker's Life and Letters.18 The story of his desultory and thwarted career is only of indirect interest to the student. At most it illustrates not so much the difficulties of modern life as the necessity for being early recognized as a man of letters. But Epilogue: The development of Flecker's art', is a very interesting and suggestive little study of the poet's Dr. Hodgson shows how Flecker first discovered his passion for poetry among the classics, but then travelled to the French Parnassians and symbolists, studying particularly Baudelaire, Gautier, Heredia, Samain, and Fort. And why did these poets out of all the world appeal to him? Because they cared for poetry in and for itself, isolated themselves from the noise and friction of modern life, eschewed mere facility of verse-writing, and pursued the subtlest, most elusive beauty, till Flecker, their 16 Henry James at Work, by Theodora Bosanquet. Hogarth Press. pp. 33. 2s. 6d.

17 The Letters of Maurice Hewlett, to which is added a diary in Greece, 1914, ed. by Laurence Binyon, with Introductory Memoir by Edward Hewlett, Methuen. pp. xi+294. 188.

18 The Life of James Elroy Flecker: From letters and materials provided by his Mother, by Geraldine Hodgson. Blackwell. pp. 288. 12s. 6d.

disciple, also himself attained to that strange music, unique in English poetry, which in Hassan trembles along strings more plangent than any earthly violins'. Our admiration for Flecker may not be quite so unqualified as that of his biographer, but we shall at any rate conclude that though he forsook the ancients he remained a classic. He certainly never belonged to the movement known as Georgian poetry'. His spirit was always too unavoidably concentrated on what one might call the permanent, established values of poetry.

That word 'poetry' brings us to the next phase of this survey. We have already considered the ideas and aspirations which seem to be struggling for expression, however obscurely, in contemporary verse. We may conclude by raising, without answering, the question whether discussions of the purely literary or technical aspects are worth while at the present time. Mr. R. Graves 19 certainly does not help us much with his views on 'The state of the parties', 'diction', ' metre', 'texture', 'rhythm', 'structure', though his quotations are useful. Mr. R. C. Trevelyan 20 seems to think that the very essence and vitality of poetry consist in recitation and incantation, and that if verse is not to decay it must preserve these qualities and recreate an exact prosody. The rhythmical structure should be built up on a definite and constant framework. From the time of Chaucer the principle governing metre has been syllable counting. But the tendency to determine rhythm by stress has been gradually gaining power, and with these lawless experiments the art of poetry is gradually being divorced from its true nature. Time alone will show whether these vaticinations are justified, and in the meantime there is no falling off in the demand for modern English poetry. The growing taste for selections perhaps shows that this demand is not uncritical. Besides a new collection of Swinburne,21 we have selections from Herbert Trench,22 Siegfried

19 Contemporary Technique of Poetry: A Political Analogy, by Robert Graves. Hogarth Press. pp. 47. 2s. 6d.

20 Thamyris: or is there a Future for Poetry?, by R. C. Trevelyan. Kegan Paul. pp. 89. 2s. 6d.

Charles Swinburne's Collected Poetical Works. Heinemann. Vol. i, pp. xlii+976; vol. ii, xiv + 1294. 15s. (both vols.).

22 Selected Poems of Herbert Trench, ed. with an Introduction by Harold Williams, 1924. Cape. pp. xii+156. 4s. 6d.

24

Sassoon, 23 Aldous Huxley. Not the least interesting is Luigi Siciliani's selection 25 of modern English poets translated with felicitous faithfulness, and accompanied with comprehensive though brief notices of the poets themselves. The Best Poems of 1925 has already been mentioned.

The widespread taste for contemporary verse is nevertheless surpassed in extent and significance by the ever-growing interest in contemporary drama. So we are glad to have before us Mr. Clark's Study of the Modern Drama.26 The book contains an invaluable mass of biographical and bibliographical information, especially the chronologically listed plays of about sixty leading dramatists; and the discursive and critical chapters are made up of suggestions and queries, quite free from any judicial or academic pose. This hypothecating and interrogatory method comes as rather a disappointment to the student familiar with the dogmatisms and deductions of orthodox manuals, but he will end by finding how searching and provocative these questions are, and how the reader gradually finds himself studying life through the medium of stagecraft.

23 Selected Poems by Siegfried Sassoon. pp. 75. Heinemann. 3s. 6d. 24 Selected Poems: Aldous Huxley. Blackwell. pp. 63. 58.

25 Luigi Siciliani: Di Poeti inglesi moderni: Traduzioni metriche e notizie. Roma-Milano. Mondadori. pp. 343.

26 A Study of the Modern Drama. A Handbook for the Study and Appreciation of the Best Plays, European, English, and American of the Last HalfCentury, by Barrett H. Clark. Appleton. pp. xi+527. $3.50.

1

XIII

BIBLIOGRAPHICA

[By ARUNDELL ESDAILE]

A VERY considerable addition has been made this year to the English student's set of tools by the publication of the Register of Bibliographies, which Mr. C. S. Northup has for many years had in preparation. For discovering what lists exist of the works of particular authors (especially minor authors), or particular classes, it will be of the greatest service. There are omissions, of course: the worst we have noticed is that all but a very few catalogues of private libraries, whether those of sales or other, are ignored, and that Hazlitt is without his Gray; but on the whole it is, like much American work of to-day, of even excessive completeness, thanks to the inclusion of a number of entries of works irrelevant to English literature, e. g. Hain, Panzer, the List of Books bound by S. T. Prideaux, and the like. The general section, which precedes the alphabetical arrangement, fills fifty columns, and should have been classified, as in Professor T. P. Cross's hand-list, if it was to be of use. The entries are followed throughout by references to reviews, which must have cost a labour out of all proportion to their value, as one at least of the reviewers can testify. The omission of these and of trivial or irrelevant books and articles would have probably made room for a fuller index. That given consists of the names of bibliographers followed by a series of entry-numbers only, with nothing to distinguish their works from one another, or even from passing references in the notes to other entries in the text, and with no references from the subjects. Moreover, though it is not given to man to avoid errors in a work of this magnitude, errors in names and other details are far too common. Yet, in spite of

1 A Register of Bibliographies of the English Language and Literature, by Clark Sutherland Northup. With Contributions by Joseph Quincy Adams and Andrew Keogh. Cornell Studies in English. New Haven: Yale University Press; London: O.U.P. pp. 507. 23s. net.

these blemishes, Mr. Northup has given us a valuable book, which we hope may be made still more so in a second edition.

The two Britwell sales 2,3 were again the most important of the year. Unique or nearly unique books which were sold include— In the first sale:

R. A. [Robert Aylett?], The Song of Songs which was Solomon's, 1621; T. H., Oenone and Paris, 1594 (title, wanting, from Stationers' Register)—the detailed parallels with Venus and Adonis, of which the cataloguer makes so much as to call the book 'a contemporary plagiarism' of it, are quite insignificant, but the metre is the same, and Venus and Adonis may have suggested Oenone and Paris-; ý new Notborune [sic] mayd vpō y passiō of cryste (John Skot, c. 1535), a moralization of the Nutbrown Maid; H. R. [Henry Roberts], A True Relation of a... Fight, performed... by two small Shippes the Vineyard..... and the Unicorne ... against sixe great Gallies of Tunes [1616]; F. Lenton, Characterismi, 1631.

In the second sale:

...

Ane breif descriptioun of the qualities and effectis of the well of the woman hill besyde Abirdene, 1580; W. Bullein, A Dialogue against the feuer Pestilence, 1564; Thre Practyses now vsed at Mountpyller by monsyre Emery (Wyer, n. d.); Erasmus, Dicta sapientu (Berthelet, n. d.); Erasmus, Declamatio in laudem medicinae (R. Redman, n. d.); The Proprytees and Medycynes for hors (de Worde? n. d.?, imperfect); Lathams Falconry, or the Falcons Lure and Cure, 1614 (an unrecorded earlier issue of the 1615 ed.); T. N., A Pleasant Dialogue between a Lady called Listra, and a Pilgrim. Concerning the Government and Commonweale of the great prouence of Crangalor, 2 pt., 1579; a number of early prognostications; W. Pank, A most breefe, easie and plaine receite for Faire Writing, [b. 1593]; T. Phaer, The Regiment of Lyfe, 1544; J. S., The True Art of Angling, 24mo, 1696; C. Saltonstall, The Navigator, 1636; J. Vaus, Rudimenta artis grammaticae (Edinburgh, Lekprevik), 1566, partly in Scots dialect.

2 Catalogue of a further Selection of

Early English Poetry... the

Property of S. R. Christie Miller, Esq. (22nd-26th March), Sotheby.

3 Catalogue of a further Portion ... comprising Early English Works on the Arts and Sciences (30th March-3rd April), Sotheby.