Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 8.djvu/100

 80 NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. vm. JAK. 22, 1921. imce, of careful reconsideration and refinement Corrections and additions have been so skilfully introduced as to be barely perceptible. The fres-hness and whimsicality of treatment remain. A few new illustrations are inserted and some of the old ones appear to have been printed from new blocks. The press work is good, and the only complaint we have concerns the paper which is too heavily clayed for permanence. But times are difficult for publishers and to have carried the work through so successfully is a matter for congratulation. Essays and Studies by Members of the English k Association. Vol. VI. Collected by A. C. Bradley. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 6s. 6d.) 'THE first volume of this Series was published in 1910. Each year saw the issue of a successor up to, and including, that epoch-making 1914, which brought so many enterprises to a pause, if not to their term. With the volume for that year the Series remained at a standstill, until now, when vol. vi. calls upon us to congratulate its promoters on the resumption of their pleasant and useful task. A collection of papers like this carefully selected and printed and put into a strong and neat cloth cover seems, by its very appear- ance, to set up some little claim to be taken more seriously than the literary essays of current journalism to be kept and, in fine, to be re-read. The claim would not, as the book stands, be without foundation, yet we wonder, somewhat, that the writers have not thought it worth while to add that additional depth of working, and also that additional polish, which would have made it obviously solid and well-founded. Three of the essays are occupied very largely with style : it seems curious that writers with that pre-occupation should not have been brought to consider the importance not merely of style in phrase but also of style in form the form of the whole. Suggestive and interesting as these papers are they are more ephemeral in quality than they need have been by reason of a certain formlessness. Having delivered ourselves of this com- plaint we can proceed to pay the thanks due for real and considerable enjoyment. Prof. Saintsbury "re-visiting" Trollope delivers himself of a principle of criticism which we wholeheartedly endorse. The questions he asks about a work of fiction, he says, are : "Is the romance such that you see the perilous seas and ride the barriere as in your own person ? Are the folk of the novel such that you have met or feel that you might have met them in your life or theirs ? If so the work passes ; with what degree of merit is again a second question." The difficulty of applying this principle where nicety of judgment is required lies in the diversity of the judges' minds. Things " come alive " much more readily to one person than to another, and even to the same person more readily at one time than another. We agree that the best of Trollope " passes " upon this principle being applied ; but, or so the present writer has found, the first reading remains the most vivid and decisive ; the second and third readings which heighten the vivacity of the characters in the greatest fiction slightly reduce the effect of all but the greatest of Trollope's creations. This is perhaps to be put down to that inequality as a story-teller with which Prof. Saintsbury gently, but justly reproaches Trollope. Mr. George Sampson contributes a delightful essay ' On playing the Sedulous Ape,' which consists of reflections and their branching reflections on the well-known passage where Stevenson declares that, in the process of acquiring the art of writing he imitated divers masters of style. He argues that critics have taken Stevenson's words with too literal and heavy a seriousness, and that, allowing them to indicate a certain amount of practical study and practice in divers English styles, done at the prentice stage of authorship, there is nothing to do but applaud. Style, as here dealt with, is an affair of sentences and phrases. As such we think it has been somewhat over- considered. No doubt phrase and sentence construction require care Mr. Sampson puts some ludicrous deterrents before the careless but we do not hear enough of the greater care which should be expended, and expended first, upon the construction, the balanced form, of the piece of writing as a whole. Again, " the nation that is muddled in its prose," he says, " will be muddled in its thought " : trite though it be, we think the converse not only truer but better worth saying. That is to say, we would support Mr. Sampson's arguments to the effect that there is a great deal to be said in favour of direct imitation of the style of this or that master of English, with a proviso : that the would-be imitator have already exercised himself in the larger problems of construction and occupied himself ade- quately with the classifying, selecting and ordering of the ideas he intends to set forth. The " getting" of a language, like the making o fa friendship, cannot be quite left to chance but yet is most successfully brought off if it is not, at the beginning, pursued too directly. Miss Melian Stawell's analysis of the work of Mr. Conrad is a very good article and should send new and keen readers to an author worthy of them. The paper for which we must express our personal predilection is the clear and charming account of the ' Caedmonian ' Genesis by Dr. Bradley a paper which alone would justify giving this attractive little volume a permanent place upon one's book- shelf. EDITORIAL communications should be addressed to " The Editor of ' Notes and Queries ' " Adver- tisements and Business Letters to "The Pub- lishers" at the Office, Printing House Square, London, E.C.4. ; corrected proofs to the Athenaeum Press, 11 and 13 Bream's Buildings, E.C.4. IT is requested that each note, query, or reply be Tirritten on a separate slip of paper, with the signature of the writer and such address as he wishes to appear.