At the exhibitions of the Royal Academy each critic would solemnly lift a hoof to give the sculptors their annual kick. "As usual, there is nothing of interest in the sculpture room," the legend would run. Now, of course, through the enthusiasm and courage of the new school, things are very different, and British sculpture excites both attention and respect, and it is a branch of art that is being followed with as much success as any other in this country. The very difficulties that have to be encountered-and sculpture is an art that is pursued under enormous diffi culties-tend to keep away all but the most worthy and the most resolute. The initial difficulties for the sculptor as compared with the painter or the author may be greater, but there can be small question, after all, as to whose is the greater gift that of the man who has the sense of the beauty of solid form, the feeling for the proportions of height and depth and width, together with the power to re-create these in marble and bronze; or his who mimics the same, however skilfully, with paint and brushes, or describes with words, however eloquent. Casket in silver and enamels in which the freedom of the Skinners' Company was presented to the Speaker. (Designed for the Skinners Company by George Frampton A.R.A.) "FE WANDERINGS IN BOOKLAND. ELICITOUS" is scarcely a good "Amid this grave-strewn, flowerless place "From praying feet to praying hands "For still to all the plea he gives "The praying-stone wears down to dust, We were especially delighted with the imagery, the reverence, and the quality of simplicity that ring through such chaste. pages of Mr. Housman's "message" as "The Truce of God" and "The Heart of the Sea." "But for this special piece of work," says Mr. Christie Murray of the author of Richard Feverel, "God had first to make him a gentleman and then to give him Even if we cannot allow that Charles Reade possessed all those sterling qualities as master of fiction which are here claimed for him, we know well what Mr. Murray means when he says that "Reade had a poet's recognition for the greatness of his own time, . . . in narrative vigour he has but one rival-Dumas père -and he is far and away the master of that rival in everything but energy" (a little "daring" this, perhaps). Here, moreover, his enthusiasm leads Christie Murray into a personal reminiscence of so richly. He answered with a gentle and sad courtesy, and concluded with these words: 'It is no discredit in a young man to esteem a senior beyond his merits.' I have always thought that Illustration from "By Stroke of Sword." on the day of issue I wrote what I very graceful and felicitous, and now that I am myself grown to be a senior I am more persuaded of its charm than ever." But if Mr. Murray glows in estimating Reade and Dickens ("no single man ever sowed gentleness and mercy with so broad a sweep" is his judgment on the latter), he drops with a heavy hand upon the claims of Miss Marie Corelli and of Mr. S. R. Crockett -a curiously-assorted couple, surelyto be considered great. In his opinion of Miss Corelli's art we must confess we go with him. "She burns to be a social reformer. It would be unjust to deny her ardour. Miss Corelli is at least quite serious in her belief that she is a woman of genius. She is only very faintly touched with doubt when she thinks that the people who are laughing at her are writhing with envy." Does not this exactly sum up Miss Corelli's attitude towards her critics-ay, and towards her readers, too? Mr. Murray rather interestingly revives Miss Corelli's emphatic denial that in the character of Mavis Mr. Christie Murray then turns and rends Mr. Crockett, whom he denounces (in effect) as out and away the most effete of the 'Kail-yard" school-as especially inferior to Dr. Macdonald, Mr. Barrie, and "Ian Maclaren." "Mr. Crockett is not only," we are told, "not a great man, but a rather futile very small one." That is severe enough, one would suppose; but two pages later our author is found piling Pelion upon Ossa by quoting in extenso a scene from one of the stories in The Stickit Minister, with this frank comment: "Was there ever a piece of sentiment cheaper, falser, or more tawdry? . . . Ex pede Hercu lem. This bedrummed and betrumpeted man of genius cannot read the ABC ab of the human emotions." In justice both to Mr. Crockett and to his outspoken critic and countryman, it should be stated that the latter had not read Lad's Love when he wrote quite so strongly. Space only admits of extended reference to Mr. Murray's appreciations of George Meredith and Robert Louis Stevensonthe best chapters in the book-albeit, in the light of the mixed reception accorded to Mr. Hall Caine's The Christian, it is instructive to know that that writer's method is large and noble." Christie Murray strikes a truer chord when he lays it down that from Meredith to Hall Caine is from art in cold calm to art in stormy fire. We think we render Mr. Murray's meaning better by saying that though Meredith is ever intensely conscious of self, it is of the selves of his characters always and we cordially - and we cordially differ from the ruling that Richard Feverel, and not Diana, is the greatest of Meredith's books. For no other man save Ibsen has been able to make women live and breathe in the printed page-as distinct from that Stevenson who pleaded "I cannot draw women: they turn to barmaids in my hands." Now it is notable that Christie Murray's chief claim for Stevenson is as a master of exquisite English. As a creative power he assigns him to the middle rung of the ladder of fame, and adds: "The most beautiful thing Stevenson has done to my mindis his epitaph. There are but eight lines of it, but I know nothing finer in its way "Under the wide and starry sky And I laid me down with a will! And the hunter home from the hill." "Sleep there, bright heart! In your waking hours you would have laughed at the exaggerated praises which do you such. poor service now." It goes without saying that the veteran critic-novelist is fired with generous eulogy of Kipling. Chapters to be read. with eagerness are the two-headed "Under French Encouragement," dealing (of course) with Hardy and George Moore. Within limits, Mr. Murray is harsh towards both, though paying high tribute to the genius of Hardy. But is he just or right in deeming Mr. Moore's peculiar psychology to have been almost wholly Zola-inspired? Should he not allow something for the influence of Ibsen and his school of "decadent " thought (the converse of Zola's, by the way) upon the Pre-Raphaelite mind? Mr. Murray passes on to pay pretty compliments to the Transatlantic school of Mr. Henry James, Mr. Howells, and Miss Wilkins, while dealing with the former as "a gentleman who has taken a little more culture than is good for the fibre of his character." Mark Twain, of course, he swears by; but we would have liked a wee bit more about Sir Walter Besant and something definite about have liked- -But there, the author might justly retort that he couldn't write about the writings of everybody. An added at traction of My Contemporaries for the reader is the perfect English in which it is Illustration from "By Stroke of Sword." (By permission of Messrs. Methuen & Co.) James Payn-surely one of the most charming of the many charming writers. who have been Christie's Murray's "contemporaries in fiction." And we would And we would wherein some two score popular novelists (including Mr. Christie Murray himself and-Miss Corelli!) have confession regarding made the fate of their first essays in fiction. I have left myself little space in which to deal with Mr. Andrew Balfour's By Stroke of Sword (Methuen), which, published during August-hearken to this, ye critics-sold out the whole of a first edition before any "notices" of it had appeared. Mr. Balfour's book is strong, romantic, and full to overflowing with exciting situations. A romance called By Right of Sword of course by another author and another publishing house-has, curiously enough, made its appearance since the publication of Mr. Balfour's book. |