RETROSPECT

OF

LITERATURE, SCIENCE, AND ART IN 1923.

LITERATURE.

(Books marked with an asterisk are specially noticed at the end of this section.) THE following analysis of books published in the United Kingdom during 1923 is taken from the Publishers' Circular, by kind permission of the Editor, Mr. R. B. Marston. The increase over the total for the previous year exceeds 1,400, and the whole output has only once been surpassed, in 1913.

CLASSIFIED ANALYSIS OF BOOKS PUBLISHED DURING THE YEAR 1923.

It was pleasant to note, both in the number of new publications and in the space devoted to the subject by those already established, the evidence of a growing popular interest in literature. Cassell's Weekly, which soon added to its title the honoured initials of its new editor, Mr. T. P. O'Connor, revived the name and the associations of T. P.'s Weekly. Later in the year the Weekly Westminster appeared in a new form, under the editorship of Mr. Ramsay Muir, having severed its connexion with the Westminster Gazette. Mr. J. Middleton Murry's new monthly, The Adelphi, favoured individualism, and afforded space to the less formal pronouncements of eminent writers and critics, but has hardly earned the distinction and authority it was expected to command. Life and Letters, a monthly devoted to current questions, politics, and literature, made its appearance in November. The Bermondsey Book, a new quarterly review of life and literature, in which many distinguished contributors ranged over a wide field, aimed definitely at bridging the rivers of prejudice and misunderstanding that divide the various classes of our population. The Cambridge Historical Journal, to be published annually in the first instance, displayed the scope and activity of the Cambridge History School; and in the field of science, special mention must be made of the appearance of three more volumes of Sir Richard Glazebrook's * Dictionary of Physics.

Biography, autobiography, and kindred works maintained their prominence, and there was a considerable increase in the number of volumes under the heading of history. In certain particulars a welcome change made itself manifest. Living personages suffered less from the attentions of the "analytical" biographer than had been their lot for some time past, and, despite the controversy naturally aroused by Mr. Winston Churchill's volumes, the general improvement in the temper of works dealing with the war period was undeniable. The many acceptable volumes of travel which made their appearance included nothing of major importance. In imaginative literature much admirable work was done, but the most fervent of the moderns would admit that masterpieces did not abound in fiction, poetry, or drama. In fact, for a year in whose output the foremost of our writers were represented, 1923 was curiously undistinguished. It did, however, witness a striking revival of interest in fine printing, such productions as the Congreve of the Nonesuch Press being particularly successful.

It is to be hoped that the historian of the future will be properly grateful for the work of our day in biography and autobiography; the age is at least bien documenté. Several works appeared in celebration of notable anniversaries. A beautiful Memorial Volume, 1632-1723, by various hands, was only one of many that marked the bicentenary of Sir Christopher Wren. The tercentenary of a delightful English musician called forth Dr. Edmund H. Fellowes' William Byrd, while Mr. Newman Flower's George Frideric Handel appeared on the eve of the great Triennial Festival. Among those not written for special occasions, the lives of statesmen may be given pride of place. The Life and Times of John Maitland, Duke of Lauderdale, by Mr. W. C. Mackenzie, succeeded in winning understanding, not admiration, for the agent of Charles II.'s policy in Scotland. The two volumes of Lady Frances Balfour's Life of George, Fourth Earl

of Aberdeen, were rather a huge memorial to that minor Victorian figure. Two illustrious Liberal leaders were portrayed full length in the * Life of Sir William Vernon Harcourt, by Mr. A. G. Gardiner, and the * Life of the Rt. Hon. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, G. C.B., by J. A. Spender. Mr. Shane Leslie compiled a brilliant memoir of a Parliamentary figure of high promise and considerable achievement in Mark Sykes: Life and Letters. The Hon. Clive Bigham supplemented his previous volume with *The Chief Ministers of England, 920-1720, and Mr. Charles Whibley published a second series of his Political Portraits, including a noteworthy set of papers on Disraeli. National leaders outside the Empire were represented by Lord Charnwood's able and enthusiastic Theodore Roosevelt, and Ray Stannard Baker's Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement, written from the unpublished and personal documents the President took away with him from Paris, the importance of which to the history of the Peace Conference justifies the scale of three volumes. Soldiers and sailors provided the central figures of several conspicuous works: Lady Brownrigg's attractive Life and Letters of Sir John Moore; the Life of General the Rt. Hon. Sir Redvers Buller, V.C., to whose memory Colonel C. H. Melville did welcome justice; the Life of Admiral of the Fleet Sir Arthur Knyvet Wilson, by Admiral Sir E. E. Bradford; and Mr. Hugh Robert Mill's Life of Sir Ernest Shackleton. A great scientist was commemorated in the Life of Sir William Crookes, O.M., F.R.S., by Dr. E. E. Fournier d'Albe. * Lord Shaftesbury, by J. L. Hammond and Barbara Hammond, may perhaps be fittingly coupled with the Life of George Cadbury, by Mr. A. G. Gardiner; both were amply entitled to the gratitude of their fellow-men, yet both were hard to love. Bernard Vaughan, S.J., by C. C. Martindale, S.J., showed how far the real greatness of Father Vaughan was apart from his newspaper notoriety. Historical biography was represented by the * Life and Principate of the Emperor Hadrian, a scholarly piece of work undertaken by Dr. Bernard Henderson, an Oxford Historian; and * Manin and the Venetian Revolution from the pen of Mr. G. M. Trevelyan. Artists ancient and modern provided material for several important volumes. Sir Theodore Cook's Leonardo da Vinci, Sculptor, supported the attribution of yet more masterpieces to his hero. Rembrandt's Paintings, a handsome work by Mr. D. S. Meldrum, dealt with the artist's uneventful life, and criticised his work with the authority that comes from deep admiration. He did not, however, discuss the question of the authenticity of the paintings attributed to Rembrandt, over which high dispute arose during the year. One of The Studio's beautiful volumes of reproductions was devoted to Thomas Rowlandson: His Drawings and Water-Colours, by Mr. A. P. Oppé; a masterly and masterful portrait-painter was depicted in the Life and Letters of Sir Hubert Herkomer, by Mr. J. Saxon Mills; and Claud Lovat Fraser, by Mr. John Drinkwater and Mr. Albert Rutherston, and The Book of Lovat Claud Fraser, by Major Haldane Macfall, were rather grandiose tributes to a graceful but restricted talent and an attractive personality. Authors were by no means neglected. There were Mr. Andrew Baker's Robert Burns: His Life and Genius, and Mr. H. W. Garrod's Wordsworth: Lectures and Essays, an unusually fresh and acute study; in Tennyson: A Modern Portrait, Mr. Hugh I'Anson Fausset set out to show that the Georgians do not

criticise the Victorian poet out of inherent depravity, but on serious grounds; and Carlyle till Marriage (1795-1826), by Mr. David Alec Wilson, was the first volume of an ambitious, anti-Froudian biography, in which the young man's personal history and philosophical development were studied in remarkable but never bewildering detail. Mr. Sidney Dark and Miss Rowland Grey hardly did full justice to their subject in W. S. Gilbert: His Life and Letters. Mrs. Janet Penrose Trevelyan told worthily the story of her mother's literary and social work in the Life of Mrs. Humphry Ward. No more complete and faithful portrait of a fine Englishwoman could be desired.

Diplomats and politicians were prominent in the autobiography of the year. Walburga Lady Paget's Embassies of Other Days ranged over the period from 1860 to 1893 in the embassies of Copenhagen, Lisbon, Florence, Rome, and Vienna. Sir Rennell Rodd's second series of Social and Diplomatic Memories, 1894-1901, covered a momentous epoch in Egyptian history, and gave a thrilling account of the author's mission to Menelik of Abyssinia. An Ambassador's Memoirs, by M. Maurice Paléologue, translated by Mr. F. A. Holt, though the published volume only carried the story of events at the Russian Court from July, 1914, to the following June, was obviously destined to have supreme historical value. This year also brought an English edition of * All in a Lifetime, the autobiography of Henry Morgenthau, United States Ambassador to Turkey during two years of war. Sir Henry Robinson's Memoirs, Wise and Otherwise, gave the harvest of forty years of official life in Ireland. There was uncommon personal and political interest in the Memories in which the Rt. Hon. Viscount Long of Wraxall looked back over the career of the better-known Mr. Walter Long, and another journey to the Treasury Bench by a very different road was described in From Workshop to War Cabinet, by the Rt. Hon. George N. Barnes. Sir Harry's Johnston's Story of My Life narrated such an experience as explorer and administrator in Africa, as naturalist, philologist, artist, and novelist as might well content a dozen men. There was a surprising but far from unwelcome outbreak of autobiography on the part of journalists. Of Sir Henry Lucy's Diary of a Journalist, however, two volumes had already appeared; the third (1910-16) happily disregarded the earlier date, and, though 1916 saw the end of "Toby M.P.'s" diary in Punch, the conclusion of the private journals need not yet be feared. Fleet Street proper was represented by Mr. Ernest Smith's thrilling Fields of Adventure and Sir Philip Gibbs's Adventures in Journalism. Mr. H. W. Nevinson's Chances and Changes took up to 1903 the personal history of a daring war correspondent, social worker, and controversialist. Two novelists contributed their recollections-Mr. Algernon Blackwood, in his exciting but unenviable Episodes before Thirty, and Mr. Pett Ridge, whose A Story-Teller: Forty Years in London, might justly have given his own attractive personality more prominence than he allowed it. The stories, excellent in themselves, hid the story-teller. The triumphant career of our great woman military painter was absorbingly told in An Autobiography, by Lady Butler. Mr. Oscar Browning's characteristic Memories of Later Years was the last published work of his lifetime. About the Rev. A. H. Sayce's Reminiscences the only possible complaint would be that his wide-ranging researches,

achievements, and adventures had been two briefly told.

The burlesque

prophetic reminiscences contained in Father Ronald A. Knox's * Memories of the Future made one of the most amusing volumes of the year.

Among cognate works, the second volume of The Farington Diary, edited by Mr. James Greig, containing the entries for a further two years up to 1804, claimed general attention. The most noteworthy part of the Letters of Thomas Carlyle to John Stuart Mill, John Sterling, and Robert Browning, edited by Mr. Alexander Carlyle, was the correspondence with Mill. The Letters and Papers of John Addington Symonds, edited by Mr. Horatio F. Brown, contained many interesting references to Browning, Tennyson, Gladstone, Stevenson, and the other giants of those days.

To the huge mass of the literature of the Great War, additions of the highest importance were made by two of the most prominent figures of that period, whose works were as sharply contrasted as their personalities. The Genesis of the War, by the Rt. Hon. H. H. Asquith, M.P., had the coolness, deliberateness, and impersonality-one might almost add, the aridity of a judgment propounded in another planet. Mr. Asquith set himself to prove two things: that for long before the struggle began England had striven for peace as obstinately as Germany had driven towards war, and that his own Government had meanwhile taken the proper steps to confront in detail the perils it foresaw. The development of the first thesis was familiar enough, but Mr. Asquith's account of the work of the Committee of Defence was packed with new and valuable information. If Mr. Asquith was the unemotional judge, Mr. Winston Churchill was the impassioned advocate. About the two volumes of The World Crisis, devoted to 1911-14 and 1915 respectively, violent controversy was bound to arise, given an author and politician of so challenging a quality. Whenever the personal issue could be ignored, there was no lack of tribute to the literary and historical significance of so brilliant a chronicle of the coming of the war, the supreme part played by the British Navy, and the hopes, triumphs, and tragedies of the Dardanelles Campaign. Volume III. of the official * History of the Great War Naval Operations was the last work of the lamented Sir Julian S. Corbett, finally edited by Lieut.-Colonel Daniel; it ranged somewhat discursively over the period from the evacuation of Gallipoli to the close of the Battle of Jutland. The first volume of another official history, The Campaign in Mesopotamia, compiled by Brigadier-General F. J. Moberly, closed with the capture of Kut in September, 1915, after providing an excellent survey of the conditions governing the whole campaign, and an admirable account of its troubled course before real disaster began to overtake it. It is no slight upon the many praiseworthy records of individual units to single out the two volumes of The Irish Guards in the Great War, edited and compiled from their diaries and papers (not to mention the proof of much verbal communication) by Mr. Rudyard Kipling, whose only son was last seen wearing their uniform at Loos. To this task Mr. Kipling dedicated his whole genius. The work contained battle pictures that were marvels of the constructive imagination; and in commemorating the deeds and the sufferings of the two battalions of the Irish Guards it came near to being the epic of the whole of the armies of Britain.