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Travellers for Ever is the title borne by a dainty little book of "fantasies and sketches" written by Mr. L. Cope Cornford, and just published by Mr. Nutt. Mr. Cornford has recently written a very creditable study of the life and achievement of Robert Louis Stevenson. It is evident that he owes something of his style and vocabulary to Stevenson, something also of these to Mr. Henley; but we do not wish to make a point of this. The point we are led to make-after reading these essays not once, nor twice, but several times-is that Mr. Cornford is very typical of a multitude of young writers to whom a St. Paul, in the dawn of a new century, might say in gentle but convincing tones: "I perceive that in all things ye are too styleful." Paul would say "styleful" -unpleasing word-because it would carry his meaning. He would not say: "I perceive that in all things ye are too careful of style"; that is impossible in young writers. Style in excess is the evil-style conceived as the root instead of the flower. The fault, no doubt, leans to virtue's side; but just now it frequently is found leaning at an angle that demands correction. It does so in Mr. Cornford's essays.

Mr. Cornford's theme is the open road, that leads from cities into the fields and woods. It is a theme on which every man has leave to write, the condition is that he shall write well. In the limited sense that he writes carefully, and with a curious search for fit and musical words, Mr. Cornford does write well. It is, indeed, "evidently manifest," to use a phrase of his own, that Mr. Cornford has spent whole afternoons in making and pruning his style. Yet by his style-we are sorry to say he is condemned. Every where it suggests things read, rather than things seen or felt. It is curious that in seven essays eulogising the country he hardly ever names a tree, bird, or plant. He writes-as might any of the "horde of sedentary persons" with whom he peoples London-of "fir-woods,' ""old-grown woods," ," "shores alive with wild fowl," "bird-voices," "pollarded willows," "leviathan beeches," and "virginal birches." Once he names the hollow clapper of the cuckoo-a phrase that could be learned from a cuckoo-clock-but when "a bird in the thicket flutes a solo," we are not told what bird; and the "strange broken speech of the wild fowl, that sometimes sounds like words," is attributed to no species. Indeed, definiteness is the last quality of these polished but periphrastic essays. Landscapes are lost in adjective and metaphor. Thus :

All the eastern sky is glowing amber; westward, riding high, the moon stares from the empyrean of cold azure washed with silver, a disc of polished brass. Wreaths of mist fill the valleys, like fleeces of carded wool. The far, lusty clarion of chanticleer rings through the hushed expectancy. The east burns redder, melting into the blue, paling the brassy moon. The icy air grows warmer, and breathes an odour of grass and flowers. A grey continent of cloud, leaning from the western sky, flashes here and there with igneous flakes of red, and, yawning into cavernous deeps, slowly breaks in pieces, and drifts, red

dening towards the misty hills that rise beyond the creaming valleys and the hanging woods. The east burns into fiery rose; a tiny wreath of cloud floating above a black mass of foliage changes hue and shape, and floats away, still changing.

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Out of the city the wayfarer follows the road; the road which runs up sheer into the lifting sky and leaps the hill, and, winding through shaughs and blowing meadows, leads past ancient churches grey with lichen and over shining water, trending always to the sea. Across the azure bloom of the summer champaign sweep vast shadows chasing gleams of silver light, until the sun goes down into his country of the sunset beyond the purple hills. Down the road, to the music of beating hoofs and tinkling bells, roll the harvest wains loaded high with wealth of sheaves; follows, heavy with toil, the train of bronzed labourers. Upon a dark bank, high above the road, stands a peasant woman holding a child in her arms, encircled and magically illumined by the western radiance. This is Nature seen in engravings. The style cries for substance, for personality-all that makes style a virtue. To call the country alluring is not to make it so. You may write of "the jolly wind," "ribbons of running water," the "haunting, eager wind," and the "amorous bravery of the spring"; you may swear that the land "smells of fairies," and point to "the long silhouette of a town rising beyond the golden pastures of a lucent sky"; you may distinguish the colour of the sea as lilac," and declare that old beeches are "writhen like fossil serpents"; you may speak of "a gaudy chime of bells"; and you may set these phrases in shapely sentences and paragraphsstill it may be naught. For to communicate only words, not things, or to communicate more words than substance, is to fail. Style is not the art of finding beautiful words and arranging them well; it is the art of fitting words to things, and arranging both well. Many pitfalls await the young author who thinks of words before things. He borrows unusual words from one model, or a few models, and the result is that in trying to bejewel his Vocabulary he narrows it. Mr. Cornford uses words like "scanted," "brash," "hebetude," "wried," "immobile," "purview," "writhen," "ceiled," "scission" and "lure" (as a noun). It is made a point by many young writers to bring such words into use. Against that we have little to say, provided the words are come by rightly. But a writer should not try to tickle his readers by a word which he has not by processes of thought truly made his own. What we notice in Mr. Cornford's book is that the presence of unusual words does not give him a large vocabulary. His repetitions are many. On one page he writes: "You shall hear the tramp of ancient armies ring upon the ribs of earth"; on another, "the weapon digged from the adamant ribs of earth.' A "white plume of smoke" is emitted, on p. 24, by a railway train, and on p. 36 a "level plume of smoke" floats from an outward-bound steamer. On p. 32 we have the "valiant sun," on p. 63 the "valiant stars." p. 24"the lusty clarion of chanticleer shatters the stillness"; and on p. 50 "the far lusty clarion of chanticleer rings through the hushed expectancy." Twice or thrice is the sky "lucent," and twice we have "the myriad wheels of circumstance." These repetitions, occurring in about fifty small pages, betray the dominance of words over things, and the dominance of a model over words. And here it may be said that the writer who takes Mr. Stevenson or Mr. Henley as his master makes a cardinal error: instead of contemplating these, who are two, he should study their models, who are many. Instead of imitating their writing, he should emulate their reading.

On

Nothing wearies like the excess of style over matter. For in such cases the disproportion is not all: the matter is sure to want quality as well as quantity. The thought seems caught out of the air. It is delicately worded, but

it is of no account. It is pretty, but it is not true. Mr. Cornford will have it that the lovers of the open road are elect. He draws tenebrous pictures of city life, of the town's "poisonous wilderness," its "sour gloom," and of the multitude who "cut their staves into shopmen's yards, and settle down to fatten peaceably in villas." He sees nothing between "the immemorial, elemental life of man, and civilisation's buckram parody." The "horrible shrill city" is to be flown. The town-dweller is admonished thus:

You read, vaguely, in the newspapers of the Army and the Navy, the Colonies, and the Agricultural Interest, it is true; nevertheless, you shall come to believe in time that the District Railway circumscribes the habitable world; and you go contentedly to and fro, like tame pheasants in a ring-fence preserve. But the drop of savage blood still throbs in some of you; and, although Esau may compromise with Jacob (for substantial reasons), he still refuses ultimate alliance with his smooth-faced kinsmen in the black coat and varnished boots.

This is what we may term "made" writing. It answers to no large essential facts. Need we point out that the wearer of varnished boots is no tame town pheasant, but a shooter of pheasants. Need we point out that the desire to see the country, and at last to live in the country, is the ruling passion of Londoners. What is suburban life but a tribute to the country? Every London suburb is a leaf straining to the light. Has Mr. Cornford seen a chrysanthemum show at the People's Palace? Has he attended a bulb auction in Poultry? or met the Spring in the Strand? A writer is not obliged to write all truths about his subject, but he must have a saving sense of them. And nothing obscures that sense more than a predominance of the wish to write over the wish to think.

We have examined Mr. Cornford's book with unusual keenness because we believe that he means to challenge criticism on his style, and because that style seems to afford a good object of inquiry at the present time. If it had fewer virtues we should have found fewer faults. Mr. Cornford has acquired a great deal of craftsmanship his sentences as sentences, and his paragraphs as paragraphs, are very well turned; he has the taste for words. But

How Long

Should Copyright Last?

Mr. Bernard Shaw's Views.

IN our issue of December 2 we printed a number of replies which we bad received from authors to the questions: Is Perpetual Copyright in books desirable? and, If not, how long should Copyright last?

To these questions Mr. Bernard Shaw replied as follows:

The proposal of perpetual copyright is a piece of rapacious impudence. Would it benefit anybody if the heirs of John Bunyan were now wallowing idly in royalties on The Pilgrim's Progress instead of working honestly for their living?

Considering that an inventor who enriches the world is granted patent rights for fourteen years only, it is not clear why an author, who possibly debauches it, should get from thirty to over one hundred years' copyright. The present term is too long, except in a very few special cases, for which extension should be granted on application to the courts. If the descendants of authors want copyrights, they can earn them by writing books.

In our issue of last week we printed the views of Mr. Herbert Thring, secretary of the Society of Authors, who concluded his remarks as follows:

It appears to me extraordinary that none of your contributors have taken into account the fact that neither the public nor the author's descendants reap the benefit, but the publishers.

Do I understand that it is the general opinion of literary men that the profits arising from the judicious administration of literary property should belong to the publisher, rather than the author's representative or the public?

Mr. Shaw now sends us the following rejoinder:

"Mr. Herbert Thring is mistaken in concluding that the point he raises has escaped my consideration. What is of more importance, he is also mistaken in supposing that a publisher can make anything out of a copyright of which he has no monopoly. The entire works of Shakespeare can be purchased for sixpence less than Mr. Pinero's worst single play, because the publisher pays nothing for Shakespeare's work and can charge nothing for it. If he attempted to put a penny on to the price on Shakespeare's account his edition could instantly be undersold to that amount by his competitors, who have the same access to Shakespeare as he. I can take a copy of 'Hamlet' into a jobbing printer's to-morrow and get it reprinted as cheaply as I could an equal quantity of copy offering rewards for lost dogs. Dent may charge me eighteenpence for Hamlet,' Cassell threepence for it, and Dicks a penny; but what I pay them for is the design of the book, the printing, the paper, the binding, the size, the copyright illustrations, the editorial notes, not for Shakespeare. Him I get for nothing.

Mr. Thring, nevertheless, thinks that a copyright which has become common property by the expiration of its monopoly is not really a national possession. In a sense, he is right. The Englishman who never buys a copy of Shakespeare's works, never reads one, and never goes to the theatre, may contend that he has never got anything by his share of the national inheritance of Shakespeare's genius, and that the readers and playgoers have used that inheritance without sharing it with him. He may claim that the Government should levy a royalty on all copies sold, and apply the proceeds to the general benefit in relief of taxation or otherwise. Similarly a Londoner who never goes into Hyde Park may contend that, to enable him to share its benefits with those who do go into it, a charge should be made for admission, and the proceeds devoted to the reduction of London rates. Or a bedridden ratepayer might demand that the street should be made a turnpike, so that the actual users should pay an equivalent for the wear and tear of the pavement into a common fund for the benefit of the bedridden and the active alike.

The answer to these perfectly logical proposals is, first, that their adoption would be so exceedingly inconvenient and costly if carried out consistently in every department of life, that they would make society physically impossible, whereas the existing communistic methods work fairly well. And second, that it is not true that the actual firsthand users of an institution are the sole or chief beneficiaries. Take the case of the British Museum Library and Reading-room. Is it a place kept up by the nation. for the benefit of the readers? No: as we authors and journalists and literary hacks know to our cost, it is a place which benefits the nation through the labour (often miserably underpaid, and largely gratuitous) of those who work there. Take again the case of railways. They benefit everybody, but only on condition that a certain number of people face the discomfort and risk of travelling by them. Hence, when other Socialists have advocated free railway travelling, I, better advised, have advocated payment of railway travellers, a juster and more popular reform.

Mr. Thring, then, need not fear that the copyrights which have lapsed into the common stock benefit only the publishers who make use of them. On the contrary, the real difficulty is to induce publishers to touch them and face the competition that follows success with them. They prefer the monopoly of copyright. When I was a boy the American publishers vied with each other in

bringing out editions of the latest works of our English novelists, who cried Thieves and Pirates with all their might. What was the result? The American public read all our leading works of fiction for a few cents, to their great benefit and to ours (since it was thus that they learnt to love literature); but the publishers were brought to the verge of ruin. To-day, when they ask me for new copyright matter, I tell them that a million words of my best writing lie at the disposal of every publisher in America; but they prefer to pay a royalty for a monopoly, and they are right. If we turn to the stage, we find that Sir Henry Irving, instead of pouring royalties into the pockets of Sardou, Pinero, Jones, and Grundy, has availed himself of the national property in Shakespeare. With what result? That he tells us that the non-copyright system has left him £100,000 to the bad. He is now glad to call in Sardou and pay him heavy royalties. It is a mistake to suppose that either publishers or managers profit by free books and plays. To them, monopoly is always worth the royalty it costs.

May I, in conclusion, say publicly what Mr. Thring knows privately: namely, that I am not one of those literary blacklegs who are not ashamed to earn a few disgraceful shillings by reviling the Authors' Society, and belittling the work which will make Sir Walter Besant famous, not as a mere author-that might happen to anybody-but as a great Trade Union secretary. Only, I have fought from the first against the clamour of the author for a perpetual literary property, and against the argument that if other men are allowed to quarter their descendants idly on the labour of future generations, why shouldn't we? Even if the claim were honest, and the argument worthy, what chance has either of acceptance in an age of increasing death duties, of jealous public limiting of concessions to electric lighting and tramway companies, of a general revolt of the public conscience against perpetual pensioners of all sorts? In this matter Sir Walter has the notions of 1860, and Mr. Lang those of 1870. It is now 1900-time for my ideas to have a turn. Mr. Nutt, I grant, is up to date: he faces the choice between the attitude of the Socialist and the attitude of the Struggle-for-Lifer, but does not give any reason why the Struggle-for-Lifers who are not authors should tax their posterity for the benefit of a seventeenth Duke of Besant or Marquis of Shaw. Perpetual copyright is an Alnaschar's dream, all the less worth troubling about in view of the fact that the copyrights most in need of help from the Society of Authors have a natural life-inextensible by any legal device whatever-of from twentyfour hours to eighteen months.

G. BERNARD SHAW."

Things Seen.

The Lower Criticism.

THE Beadle was a bland, elderly, sententious man, with a taste for wisdom, and a paternal interest in the shrubs and flowers of the Public Garden under his charge.

As my homeward route at the close of every workingday took me through his garden, a casual friendship grew up between us. We always exchanged greetings, which now and again expanded into conversation, as on one December evening when the trees stood out black and bare against the flying clouds. On that night the windows of the church at the corner of the garden were alight, and the frosty air was filled with melody.

"Choir practising, I suppose?"

The Beadle nodded, and tilted his bland face a couple of inches nearer the heavens. "It does one good to stand outside and hear them rolling the psalm to wintry skies," he said. "I don't go to church now. I've given up going to church. My wife goes to church, but women don't think the same way as men."

He was silent for a minute, gazing at the sky. "Perhaps she's right," he continued; "but I don't see how a man can go to church if he doesn't believe the Bible's all true. Do you, sir?"

I gave a small, non-committal cough.
The singing ceased.

"Well, it's tea-time," he said; and as we paced along the asphalte path he inquired if I had seen the new Bible Dictionary. Without waiting for my answer, he continued: "It's a wonderful book. A gentleman, a great barrister living over there in the Inn, lent me the first volume. It goes from A to D, and plays havocgreat havoc, sir-with the Bible. It's queer reading for a Christian woman, so I keep it locked up, out of the way of my wife. It's no good upsetting one's womenfolk. They haven't got the same brains like us.". He clutched my arm and lowered his bland face to mine: ""Tisn't only the Old Testament they play havoc with. There's a German professor says that the Star of Bethlehem shines only in the legend, and-and-his voice sank to a whisper -they don't even let St. Paul alone. But I must keep it from the missis. It don't do, sir, to upset women."

By this time we had reached the lodge. He pushed open the door, disclosing a bright room with the cloth laid for tea. In a low chair by the fire sat an old lady, with an open book upon her knees. She smiled upon her husband and greeted me pleasantly.

"I was getting anxious about you, William, dear." "I've been having a bit of a talk with this gentleman," said William.

"And what have you been talking about?" asked the old lady.

William looked uncomfortable: "It's not the kind of talk that you would want to hear, Mary."

She glanced up quickly at her husband. There was such divination in the look-such a kind, reproachful comprehension shone on her wrinkled face-that I was moved to say: "Your husband has been regretting that he can no longer go to church because-because the higher criticism has made such havoc with the Bible that he can no longer accept its infallibility."

"Dear William!" said the old lady, and she took her husband's hand. "Dear William!”

She did not speak for a minute-she only looked at him, as one might look at a forgiven child.

"Dear William," she said, "I knew what was troubling you, and I knew that you was trying to spare me. Oh, William, 'tisn't what men have said or written that's given me peace all my days and happiness now that I'm an old woman. If every line of the Bible was proved to be false, if all the learned men in the world came to the door and told me I was an old goose, it wouldn't make no difference. Dear William, it's what I know that makes me happy and sure-so sure. Nobody can teach me, and nobody can take it away from me, William, dear." And then she read aloud this from the book upon her knee: "I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air; I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care."

All Real.

He was a big man, and a veritable red-neck. Looking at him as he sat next me at the long counter of a London restaurant, I surmised thus:-An office in the City, a house at Crouch End, a wife and four children, a good deal of smoking and billiards, a good deal of sleep and tubbing. Yet this formidable Englishman had propped before him a well-thumbed copy of Short Stories, a penny weekly publication. While he was cutting his stewed steak and conveying it to his mouth his eye never left the frivolous page leaning against the water-jug.

The contradiction between the man whose back sloped away like a mountain side and the frail penny literature which interested him more than his food fascinated me. Long he munched and read, and long I was conscious of his tall silk hat tilted back, and his staring forward gaze at the paper. A colophon on the page showed that the story was ending. My curiosity was great. At last he started, summoned the waiter, and counted out his money. Meanwhile I was able by an effort to gather the conclusion of the story which had held him. This is what I read in difficult glances:

"On the Green Room couch lay Nanine; on one side stood Lord Borrodaile, Harold Methuen on the other.

She opened her eyes. There bending over her stood her mother and Harold Methuen, hand in hand.

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"E. H." and "Contemporary Style." SIR,-Could you not bestow a New Year's boon on the majority of your readers by spiking "E. H.'s" gun, or taking away his breech-block, and so putting an end to his pedantic effusion on a subject already fairly well understood by many educated persons? He does not appear to note the difference between a report written against time and calculated to convey an idea of the situation to eager and anxious readers, and Count Tolstoy's MS.-which makes one long to be his typewriter!

Now if you could persuade "E. H." to send his lucubrations to the prisoners at Pretoria, history would be repeated, and no doubt the prisoners would be charmed. On May 2, 1818, Mr. William Cobbett wrote a dedication to his Grammar, of which the following is a portion :-"To Mr. Benbow, shoemaker, of Manchester. DEAR SIR,-When, in the month of August, 1817, you were shut up in an English Dungeon by order of Lord Sidmouth, without any of the rules or forms prescribed by law of the land; without having been confronted with your accusers; without having been informed of the charge against you; while you were thus suffering under the fangs of absolute power, I did myself the honour to address you, from this place, two Letters on English Grammar, and in those letters I stated to you my intention of publishing a book on that subject." How delighted Mr. Benbow must have been! I am told a prisoner will read anything.

Well, in the course of Mr. Cobbett's work, he quotes startling errors from Dr. Johnson's writings in the Rambler. It is quite evident the Doctor either emended his writing till he forgot his subject, or else thought quicker than he could write. The majority of books are marred by stilted grammatical (?) sentences, which delight reviewers, but stop all action. Fancy you and I on the top of a fireescape pausing to consider our Addison! "Get on, or let me,' would be about our form; we should wait till afterwards to note the "lurid glow," and "the myriad, wind-swept sparks falling in showers like a labyrinthine firmament." May we never try. A happy new year.I am, &c., EYRE HUSSEY.

Bromsberrow, Ledbury: Jan. 3, 1900. ["Fancy you and I on the top of a fire-escape." By fancy Mr. Hussey means imagine or suppose.

In any

case, the word is an active transitive verb, and should have governed the accusative.-E. H.]

Our Weekly Prize Competitions. Result of No. 15 (New Series).

LAST week we offered a prize of one guinea for the best set of mottoes to be placed over the doors of (a) a dining-room, (1) a music-room, (c) a library, and (d) a bedroom. The mottoes were to be chosen from English authors and none were to exceed two lines in length.

A not unexpected feature of the mottoes sent to us is that almost every set contains at least one happy suggestion. Not a few sets contain three good mottoes but break down in the fourth.

The best complete set of mottoes comes from Mr. Burnell Payne, 78, Wimpole-street, Cavendish-square, W., to whom a cheque for one guinea has been sent. Mr. Payne's set is as follows: DINING-ROOM.

"Now, good digestion wait on appetite,
And health on both."

Shakespeare.

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Hackney; A. H. W., Westward Ho; A. M. J., Eccles; B. B., Birmingham; J. D. W., London; A. R. B, Malvern; D. M. L. S., London; L. P., Inverness; C. M. J., Hexham; C J. P. C., Cambridge; M. C., Dorking; C. S., Brighton; J. R, Aberdeen; W.H. B., Plaistow; H. R. C., Egham; H. F. McD., London; S. T., London; W. J. F., Birmingham; E. L. C., Redhill; F. L., London; G. R., Aberdeen; J. B., Wimbledon; E. G. B., Liverpool; E. E., Malvern ; H. W. F., Cork; G. E. M., London; H. D. R., London; E. H., Didsbury; G. S., Edinburgh; H. G. H., Whitby; A. H. C., Lee; A. U., London.

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The first of these verses is completed by arranging the letters D-E-I-G-N-S in four ways to fill the four blanks. The verse then reads :

My Muse, who often deigns to treat

Of trifles, now has persevered

To tell of him, whose fearless fleet

Once singed the haughty Spaniard's beard.

By bold design, in daring age,

Drake signed his name on history's page.

Similarly, the second verse is completed by arranging the letters T-H-A-N-E-S as Thane, Athens, and hasten.

We offer a guinea for the best anagram-verse of this kind.
The subject of the verse must have a literary flavour.

The key-words must be supplied to us, and these should be written below the verse, not inserted in the blanks.

The pith and quality of the resulting anagram-verse will be our main consideration in awarding the prize.

RULES.

Answers, addressed "Literary Competition, The ACADEMY, 43 Chancery-lane, W.C.," must reach us not later than the first post of Tuesday, January 9. Each answer must be accompanied by the coupon to be found in the first column of p. 20 or it cannot enter into competition. Competitors sending more than one attempt at solution must accompany each attempt with a separate coupon; otherwise the first only will be considered. We wish to impress on competitors that the task of examining replies is much facilitated when one side only of the paper is written upon. It is also important that names and addresses should always be given : we cannot consider anonymous answers.

OUR SPECIAL PRIZE COMPETITIONS. (For particulars see inside page of cover.) Received this week: J. D.

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The present work is in no sense a translation of Herr Mau's earlier and numerous contributions to the subject. The plan of the book falls naturally into several divisions, the first of which recounts the early history of the city and its destruction. A large portion is devoted to a description of the excavations which have been made, and the various buildings, public and private, which have been uncovered. Ten full-page photogravures, and more than two hundred "half-tone engravings are provided, and the book is in all other ways handsomely equipped. (Macmillan. 25s. net.)

DARWIN AND DARWINISM.

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BY P. Y. ALEXANDER.

A clearly written and manifestly sincere criticism of many of Darwin's positions. Mr. Alexander acknowledges "the master's" wonderful gifts of observation, but like some other

critics-distrusts his conclusions. Only certain lines of inquiry are opened in this book, of which the "argument" is stated very succinctly under eleven heads. The author's first point is to endeavour to show that the Origin of Species, in its main character, was superseded by the Descent of Man. The misuse of the word instinct, by Darwin and his disciples, is another of Mr. Alexander's themes. (Bale, Sons & Danielsson. 7s. 6d. net.)

PULPIT POINTS FROM LATEST LITERATURE.

BY J. F. B. TINLING. "Illustrations are necessary to a preacher, and a large proportion of them should be fresh." Accordingly Mr. Tinling has made this collection of short extracts from the books of 1898, touching on all manner of pulpit topics, as: "Apathy," "Official Corruption, 66 Meeting Death,' "A True Gentleman, Marriage Without Love, 'Night Refuges," &c. It is his hope to issue such a volume yearly. (Hodder & Stoughton. 5s.)

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LIFE AND HAPPINESS.

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BY AUGUSTE MAROT.

A practical unpretending little book of advice about the care of Body, Mind, and Soul, by one who, finding himself strong and happy, wishes to see his readers similarly blessed. This personal tone distinguishes the book from most budgets of advice. (Kegan Paul. 2s. 6d. net.)

OSBERN

AND

URSYNE:

A DRAMA IN THREE ACTS.

BY

JOHN OLIVER HOBBES.

PRESS NOTICES.

"The work before us reveals a sustained nobility of style .....And this short essay in dramatic verse can only add fresh proof of the tine catholicity of her genius."-OWEN SEAMAN, in the Morning Post, Nov., 1899.

"There is a play by John Oliver Hobbes in verse, which, solemn and pathetic as it is, is quite as admirable......as her lighter prose." Scotsman, July 3, 1899.

"This is a striking poetical play written partly in rhymed dialogue, partly in blank verse, and partly in prose......There is real poetry in the play, and it has more than beauty enough to make it please any lover of poetry who takes it up."-Scotsman, Nov. 11, 1899.

"John Oliver Hobbes's new venture is a tragedy, and in some sense a strong one. It is good to read and might easily be adapted for the stage. It has the merit of concentration, and, if carefully mounted and skilfully acted, would produce powerful effects. Its plot is one which might have inspired Eschylus or Shakespeare to produce a great play.... It is a powerful play, and is full of striking lines and passages. Whether it is put upon the stage or not, it may be said with truth that the author has achieved a success that has in it some of the elements of greatness."-Glasgow Herald, Nov. 11, 1899. "Osbern and Ursyne,' a drama in three acts in verse, seems to us very beautiful and melodious."-Daily Chronicle, June 30, 1899.

"In Osbern and Urayne'. • the theme is dramatic, the handling imaginative and powerful."-WILLIAM ARCHER, in the Daily Chronicle, Nov., 1899. "Written partly in blank and partly in rhymed verse, with an occasional subsidence into prose, 'Osbern and Ursyne' contains pretty passages and some striking ones......One is stirred by the keynote of the drama-a love great enough to make a woman kill her beloved for his good, and a love great enough to enable a man to commit murder to save his sweetheart from a taint." Outlook, Nov. 11, 1899.

"John Oliver Hobbes's blank verse Anglo-Saxon play, 'Osbern and Ursyne,' has......subtlety. It is also lofty and poetical .....In reading it you cannot help feeling that she understands the principles of tragedy."-Queen, July 29, 1899. "Mrs. Craigie's play. ......both in bulk and literary merit is the most important contribution to the Anglo-Saxon.' "-Standard, June 30, 1899.

"The play is a very fine piece of dramatic literature, in which all the clear" ness of vision and insight into motive which cryst ullises into sparkling epigram in this author's novels, has been used to form poetic periods which are neither artificial nor unduly stilted. Some of the assages are almost Shakesperian, and will easily bear comparison with extrac.s from Rostand's 'Cyrano.' Considerable knowledge of stage technique is also manifest throughout, and it is evident that Mrs. Craigie has devoted considerable time and used the results of copious study in the construction of the play." Brooklyn Eagle, Nov. 29, 1899.

JOHN LANE, The Bodley Heid, Vigo Street, London.

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