The Rise of Huxley

I dined with a whole lot of literary and scientific people.... Owen was, in my estimation, great, from the fact of his smoking his cigar and singing his song like a brick.

THESE sentences occur in a letter from Huxley to his eldest sister, Mrs. Scott, written in 1850. The letter is given in a chapter from Mr. Leonard Huxley's life of his father, which, by enterprise and good luck, the editor of McClure's Magazine is able to lay this month before his readers. This chapter, heralding a biography on which great hopes are set, tells of Huxley's early struggle to win a livelihood by scientific work. A more moving and inspiring story of its kind could hardly be imagined; and though it covers only five years, years of hard-breathing effort rather than fulfilment, the long career of Thomas Henry Huxley is lit up and embellished by the revelations afforded of the young surgeon's aims, both as the world viewed them and as he weighed them in his own wise, self-loyal heart. On such data one boldly forms final judgments of Huxley, assured that they will not be disturbed by the completed record of which this chapter is but a small part. It is already shown that Huxley set out, or rather was temperamentally destined, to live the full life of a man. Unlike Browning's grammarian, who decided not to Live but to Know, Huxley made it his business to know and live-accepting the harder task of reconciling the two ambitions.

In

It is now fifty years since Huxley returned to England after a spell of work as assistant surgeon on the exploring frigate H.M.S. Rattlesnake in Australian waters. Sydney he had become engaged to Miss Nettie Heathorn, and when he set foot on shore at Chatham his consuming wish was to give that young lady a home of her own. The letters printed in McClure's Magazine show what pains of frustration the young lover had to undergo. In the letter to his sister in Tennessee, already mentioned, Huxley writes under the date November 21, 1850 (he is at the age of twenty-five):

Now, as to my own affairs-I am not married. Prudently, at any rate, but whether wisely or foolishly I am not quite sure yet, Nettie and I resolved to have nothing to do with matrimony for the present. In truth, though our marriage was my great wish on many accounts, yet I feared to bring upon her the consequences that might have occurred had anything happened to me within the next few years. We had a sad parting enough, and as is usually the case with me, time, instead of alleviating. renders more disagreeable our separation. I have a woman's element in me. I hate the incessant struggle and toil to cut one another's throat among us men, and I long to be able to meet with someone in whom I can place implicit confidence, whose judgment I can respect, and yet who will not laugh at my most foolish weaknesses and in whose love I can forget all care. All these conditions I have fulfilled in Nettie. With a strong natural intelligence, and knowledge enough to understand and sympathise with my aims, with the firmness of a man, when necessary, she combines the gentleness of a very woman and the honest simplicity of a child, and then she loves me well, as well as I love her, and you know I love but few-in the real meaning of the word, perhaps, but two-she and you. And now she is away, and you are

away. The worst of it is I have no ambition, except as means to an end, and that end is the possession of a sufficient income to marry upon. I assure you I would not give two straws for all the honours and titles in the world. A worker I must always be-it is my naturebut if I had £400 a year I would never let my name appear to anything I did or shall ever do It would be glorious to be a voice working in secret and free from all those personal motives that have actuated the best. Towards the end of the letter he grips his pen a little harder :

I don't know and I don't care whether I shall ever be what is called a great man. I will leave my mark somewhere, and it shall be clear and distinct |T. H. H., his mark. | and free from the abominable blur of cant, humbug, and self-seeking which surrounds everything in this present world-that is to say, supposing that I am not already unconsciously tainted myself, a result of which I have a morbid dread.

One piece of luck he had; he was given a shore appointment to H.M.S. Triguard at Woolwich. It enabled him to live in London, and reap the fruits of his Rattlesnake memoirs, which he had sent to England and which had received instant recognition. At a bound, indeed, Huxley had placed himself in the front rank of naturalists; but this was a different thing from being able to marry Nettie. To that loyal young lady he wrote again and again, as his fortunes swayed back and forward, yet on the whole forward. He had unbearable spells of depression between his successes. In March, 1851, he writes: "To attempt to live by any scientific pursuit is a farce. Nothing but what is absolutely practical will go down in England." Continuing to bring out his biological papers, he suddenly received a great encouragement. The Royal Society wanted fresh blood, wanted to replace its dilettanti by workers. It was resolved to elect fifteen men who were likely to do the Society honour; and of thirty-eight candidates, Huxley was one of the chosen. On this he writes: "I was talking to Professor Owen yesterday, and said that I imagined I had to thank him in great measure for the honour of the F.R.S. 'No,' he said, 'you have nothing to thank but the goodness of your own work.'" Yet in the letter to Nettie, in which he tells her of his election, the young F.R.S. indulges in more pessimism:

Opportunities for seeing the scientific world in England force upon me every day a stronger and stronger conviction. It is that there is no chance of living by science. I have been loth to believe it, but it is so. There are not more than four or five offices in London which a zoologist or comparative anatomist can hold and live by. Owen, who has a European reputation, second only to that of Cuvier, gets as Hunterian Professor £300 a year! which is less thau the salary of many a bank clerk. . . In literature a man may write for magazines and reviews, and so support himself; but not so in science. I could get anything I write into any of the journals or any of the Transactions, but I know no means of thereby earning five shillings. A man who chooses a life of science chooses not a life of poverty, but, so far as I can see, a life of nothing, and the art of living upon nothing at all has yet to be discovered. You will naturally think, then, Why persevere in so hopeless a course? At present I cannot help myself. For my own credit, for the sake of gratifying those who have hitherto helped me on- nay, for the sake of truth and science itself, I must work out fairly and fully complete what I have begun, and when that is done, I will courageously and cheerfully turn my back upon all my old aspirations. The world is wide, and there is everywhere room for honesty of purpose and earnest endeavour. . . . So far as the acknowledgment of the value of what I have done is concerned, I have succeeded beyond my expectations, and if I have failed on the other side of the question, I cannot blame myself. It is the world's fault and not mine.

The world did not mend its ways for long after that, and Huxley was well-nigh maddened by poverty and hope deferred; few things being harder to bear than frustration

in honourable love when a single turn of the wheel of Fortune might confer paradise. Huxley found himself treated with extraordinary respect by the foremost scientific men of the day; his work was quoted as having full authority; and following his election to the Royal Society in 1851, he won that Society's Gold Medal, and was elected to the Society's Council. But what was all this without Nettie ?

It was sore waiting, and distraught planning. A professorship of Toronto lured him, but he was pressed to stay in England. Others saw as plainly as himself his high call, and, more plainly than himself, his ultimate success. And while he wore out his heart, Nettie was so distant that his hotly-written letters took four to six months to reach her, and her advice had lost all applicability when it came to his hand. He even thought of throwing up England and going out to Sydney to practise as a surgeon; but his "demon" forbad. He wished he understood brewing; he could then join Nettie's father in business. But to all such proposals that young lady returned a decisive "No." "A man," she said, "must pursue those things which he is fitted to do well." The lover breathed a deep sigh of relief: "The spectre of a wasted life has passed before me-a vision of that servant who hid his talent in a napkin and buried it."

A wave of hope imbathes his spirit. Writing in July, 1853, he says:

My course in life is taken. I will not leave London-I will make myself a name and a position as well as an income by some kind of pursuit connected with science, which is the thing for which nature has fitted me if she has ever fitted any one for anything. Bethink yourself whether you can cast aside all repining and all doubt, and devote yourself in patience and trust to helping me along my path as no one else could. I know what I ask, and the sacrifice I demand, and if this were the time to use false modesty, I should say how little I have to offer in return.

I am full of faults, but I am real and true, and the whole devotion of an earnest soul cannot be overprized.

It is as if all that old life at Holmwood had merely been a preparation for the real life of our love-as if we were then children ignorant of life's real purpose as if these last months had merely been my old doubts over again, whether I had rightly or wrongly interpreted the manner and the words that had given me hope.

We will begin the new love of woman and man, no longer that of boy and girl, conscious that we have aims and purposes as well as affections, and that if love is sweet, life is dreadfully stern and earnest.

Stern and earnest it remained, for, when at last the Fates wearied of trying his spirit, they yet doled out their gifts with austerity. Still, it was the end of a long agony when he got work that enabled him to snap his fingers at the Admiralty, and when Churchill the publisher commissioned a Manual of Comparative Anatomy, and the Westminster Review began to pay him for articles. The prospect of being Fullerian lecturer at the Royal Institution was held out to him, and, better still, Edward Forbes's post at the Museum of Practical Geology, worth £200 a year, was given to him. He could make another £250 a year by his pen alone. He could marry. The course of events was now punctual and apposite as at the end of a novelette. For when he took his seat in the Geological Museum "it happened that Miss Heathorn and her parents had just settled to return to England, where they arrived in May, 1855, and the wedding took place on July 21."

From these glimpses it will be seen that Mr. Leonard Huxley's life of his father is a book to anticipate with peculiar pleasure. Even the greatest scientists are rapidly superseded; they did but forge links in a chain to which there is no end. Hence the biography of a student of Nature requires for its interest a deal of humanity; life as well as work; and it should show a man who could emerge from his laboratory to "smoke his cigar and sing his song like a brick." It should depict a Huxley.

I have forgotten the name, but he was pointing to a blue flower that poised its tiny bell on a slender stem at the other side of the stream. The elder scientist looked, and the eyes grew warmer and less keen, and the furrows grew less deep and long, as he looked. It was a rare Hower and a pretty one.

"I am in luck," said the younger, preparing to leap across the stream; "that will be an addition to my collection."

"I think not," slowly answered his companion. "What do you mean?"

"I mean," said the elder gravely, "that no man plucks flowers and shortens their all too brief life when I can prevent it."

Soon the debate waxed warmer than ever. The sentimentality of the Materialist was absurd; perhaps no man would pass that way again until the grace of the flower had fallen into corruption. Yet some strong force in the old man's heart made him wholly inflexible. At length the younger man made an angry move towards the stream. His companion quickly leaped across before him, took his geological hammer from his wallet, and sat down sternly beside his unconscious charge.

And there the Materialist sat through the afternoonfor his companion was stubborn too. The elder man was

the last to run for the train. And the flower lived on.

The Schooner.

BEHIND me the town stretched lank and grey and weather-beaten. Row on row of shuttered windows and drawn blinds suggested irresistibly the deserted theatre. But the stage itself was full of light and movement, and I, lying lonely among the sandhills, was the only spectator.

Over my head a lark fluttered in the sunshine, now and then a red golfing jacket would pop up like a rabbit; but I had eyes only for the sea. After long months of confinement in the measured bounds of city streets my eyes revelled in the sense of colour and distance. Brick and stucco preserve a dull uniformity of tone, but here all was a maze of shimmering colours. There were yellows and greens in the shallows, further out violet, and then a thousand varying tones of purple up to the dark semi-circle of the horizon.

So, though the wind whistled shrilly in the grasses, I lounged and smoked, and was happy. That morning, as the train rattled through the green country, thrushes were singing in sheltered inland gardens, and the air was heavy with the smell of new-turned earth.

Here, too, spring was calling, but with a deeper, stronger note. Then suddenly through a gap in the line of houses there was a flutter of bellying canvas, and a little schooner came tacking out of the mouth of the harbour. She was dirty and unpainted; her decks were choked with litter; but she met the long roll of the waves with a jaunty swagger, and was transformed by the sea and the sunlight. As she steered slowly out, I saw a fellow in the stern wave his cap defiantly to the grim, unresponsive line of houses, that had seen so many boats sail out. It thrilled me.

MR. JUSTIN MCCARTHY's list of "disappearing authors has excited much surprise. It included Jane Austen, whose new editions are legion; Trollope, who, it is credibly stated, is "in" for a revival; Charles Lever, of whose works one firm alone (Messrs. Downey) have sold £9,000 worth in the last few years; and Charles Reade. We ourselves disputed the "disappearing" of Jane Austen, and a correspondent quickly confirmed our view by informing us that the Kilburn Free Library issues each of her novels to twenty-one readers per annum. We have since made a few inquiries, which throw some interesting and varied sidelights on the subject. First we will give the testimony of the librarians of two of the largest free libraries in the country, those of Nottingham and West Ham.

Mr. J. Potter Briscoe, City Librarian of Nottingham, writes:

Jane Austen is an unknown name to the present generation of our readers.

Trollope's works are rarely asked for.

The three Charles' are waning in popularity. Kingsley is known through his Westward Ho! and Hereward the Wake only. Reade is in slight request, and Lever is not so popular as he was even five years ago.

We are now overstocked with the novels of the five mentioned authors.

Mr. Briscoe can hardly be mistaken about the status of Jane Austen in Nottingham. We are astonished by his report of her case.

Mr. Alfred Cotgreave, Chief Librarian at West Ham, partly confirms Mr. Briscoe. He brackets Jane Austen and Anthony Trollope as authors who are "certainly not so much read now"; and Trollope, we know, is read very little, lacking the new and dainty editions which have been showered-vainly ?-on Jane. The other authors -Lever, Kingsley, and Reade-"still maintain their popularity to a great extent at West Ham." Here is a table of issues for one year at West Ham :

Again we are astonished, and, indeed, we are resolvedif we can do it with strict adherence to truth-to bring kindlier witnesses to Miss Austen's popularity. We will consult the booksellers. A large City firm reports that Kingsley's novels and Lever's military novels sell well, but not Trollope or Reade. And then :

Whether Jane Austen be read or not it is impossible to say; this we know, that there have in quite recent years been five different editions published, all of which met with a ready and extensive sale.

A Manchester bookseller confirms the wide sale of Jane Austen; and from Oxford-where Trollope, Lever, and Reade are reported to be in a bad way-comes the same persistent distinction in Jane Austen's case:

As to Jane Austen buying is not, of course, synonymous with reading, and a mere bookseller can speak only of his sales; but, judging by the constant demand for her works here in Oxford, it may be assumed that many "attempts to read her are made, and I venture to hope we may safely go further and say that she is both read and enjoyed to a considerable extent.

The only comfort we pluck from these hesitating reports of Jane, is that they throw a doubt, which we have long shared, but dared not breathe, on the "dainty edition." We have a suspicion that the dainty edition is frequently no more than a dainty sepulchre.

Eastbourne says: "Mr. McCarthy is altogether wrong about Jane Austen's novels. The modern reader does read her works. Ten years ago I would not think of having one of her books in stock, now I have them in two or three editions, and find a slow but increasing sale.”

Brighton says that Trollope, Reade, and Lever are not only disappearing but have disappeared. But Kingsley holds his own, and "as to Jane Austen, however much her works have been neglected for years past, there has been a greatly revived interest in them, and they have been widely read and still are."

It seems, then, that Jane Austen sells in the bookshops, but is not borrowed in the libraries. This might simply mean that she is so popular that readers insist on possessing her for themselves; but this would be a too optimistic interpretation of the facts.

It is clear that Kingsley and Lever still hold their own pretty well. Yet in Lever's case we are told, from two quarters, that his sales are retarded by the lack of a good cheap edition of his works.

Reade is in a bad way, yet an Oxford-street bookseller prefers him before Kingsley and Trollope; and Reade's Cloister and the Hearth is "in continuous demand" in Manchester, where, also, his other books are "worth keeping always in stock." Trollope is nearly extinct in Manchester. Both Trollope and Lever are neglected at Eastbourne: "I have not been asked for a work of theirs for some years, and I have lately cleared them out of my library as lumber; and I am sorry to say that Charles Reade is disappearing." At Bristol Trollope and Reade are "moribund."

These reports cannot be said to contradict in any marked way Mr. Justin McCarthy's estimates of the present popularity of writers like Jane Austen, Lever, Reade, Trollope, and Kingsley; and they show that the most championed and new-editioned author of them all-Jane Austen-is by no means so safely throned as some of us had thought.

Puritan Drama.

THE Elizabethan Stage Society's performance of "Samson Agonistes," in the Lecture Theatre at South Kensington, last Saturday, was an interesting experiment, but it was hardly more. If, as one gathers from Milton's preface, the play was intended more or less as a protest against the Romanticism of the Elizabethans, it certainly justifies the Elizabethans. But "Samson" was never written to be acted, and it is therefore hardly fair to judge it as a stage play. It is a magnificent poem, but it is not a great drama. Even judged by the severe standard of a Greek tragedy it is sadly deficient in incident and action. There is no development of character. The whole thing is statuesque to the verge of woodenness. In a sense "Samson Agonistes" is a faithful copy of Attic tragedy, but it is Attic tragedy seen through Puritan glasses, dour and hard and doctrinaire. And Milton has not always endeavoured to imitate the Greek tragedians at their best. The long opening soliloquy of more than a hundred lines, in which the hero expounds his past fortunes to the audience, was not considered the most skilful way of unfolding a plot even in the age of Pericles. Samson's angry argument with Dalila and his dialectical discussion with Manoa recall Euripides in his most forensic vein, that vein which roused the wrath of Aristophanes, while the choruses are sometimes modelled too faithfully on the most didactic moments of Greek choruses, and often lack beauty.

It

The splendour of the play lies in its lofty feeling, its resonant verse, and in the finely-conceived character of the hero. But more than this is required to make a play interesting on the stage, and Milton gives us no more. is possible that if "Samson" were given in the true Greek fashion-in a theatre on a hillside overlooking the sea, with the blue waves dancing in the sunshine and the blue sky overhead-it would be easier to bear. It is possible that much of Euripides, and even of Sophocles, would have sounded rather dull in a South Kensington lecture theatre at, once draughty and stuffy. But we doubt whether even in the theatre of Dionysus at Athens, or on a Sicilian hillside, Milton's tragedy would have been successful. There is a Puritan rigidity about it, and an absence of the human elements of love and passion which would always leave an audience cold. It may be urged that something of the same criticism might be made of the "Prometheus Vinctus." But the chained Titan's invectives against Omnipotence are necessarily more stirring, more dramatic, than Samson's carefully-reasoned submission to the Divine will, and the choruses of Milton are not the choruses of Eschylus. It was perhaps a little unkind of Mr. Poel to emphasise this fact by the music to which those choruses were set. It may have been a compliment to Milton's stern Puritan views to make his Danites intone their comments as if they were verses of the Psalms, but the setting only emphasised the rather dreary austerity of the poet's lines. Nor were matters improved when, in moments of grotesque excitement, the Danites (most of whom were ladies) all spoke at once in a curious staccato sing-song.

But it would be ungrateful to reproach the Society for the short-comings of Saturday's performance. The problem of "staging" a Greek chorus in these days has never been successfully solved, and we admire Mr. Poel's courage in attempting to act "Samson Agonistes" too much to criticise the result harshly. When all is said, one does not go to "Samson" for drama. The interest of the play is mainly autobiographical. As one sees the hero blind among his enemies, bewailing his folly in having trusted his two Philistian wives, one sees Milton, blind also, and living among a generation whose ideals were other than his, bewailing his unfortunate marriages, and longing for strength to pull down their Dagon's temple upon the heads of the good folk of the Restoration. The acting was undistinguished, but it would have needed superb elocutionary power and great intellectual gifts to give Milton's long rhetorical speeches with effect, and the argumentative passages would probably have been intolerable under any circumstances. It was therefore no disgrace for the actors to fail in so hard a field.

Correspondence.

Maeterlinck and the "Contemporary Review."

SIR, Mr. Ropes's letter seems to call for a few words in reply. He now tells us that his article was not intended as a complete study of Maeterlinck's work, but merely as a discussion of his "artistic methods." It is a pity that these limitations were not more clearly defined at first. When he says (Contemporary Review, page 423): "The function of criticism is not so much to condemn or praise, as to understand and explain. If Maeterlinck is the greatest genius of the age, let us see in what his greatness resides; if he is a mere babbling idiot, let us at least classify his idiocy and assign him to his proper ward in the asylum of degeneracy," it is difficult to believe that only questions of artistic method occupied his mind.

Had this been so, however, it seems doubtful whether the technique of any writer can be justly criticised apart from a consideration of the message which it is intended to

bear. Certainly the delicate framework on which the mystic poets hang the filmy tissue of their thought must appear meaningless to those who, like Mr. Ropes, deliberately ignore their symbolism and intention. "His (Maeterlinck's) essays," he says, "his mysticism and philosophy, were outside my consideration except in so far as they enabled a reader to understand his artistic methods."

But a knowledge of Maeterlinck's philosophy, as exhibited in his essays, must go hand in hand with any true comprehension of his technique. I am surprised that any serious critic could doubt this. Desiring to express certain spiritual truths, Maeterlinck chooses the medium best suited to his design: Mr. Ropes, ignoring the spiritual truths, belittles the achievement because the medium is not to his mind.

Secondly, Mr. Ropes finds my summary of his article. inaccurate. It appears that his languid praise of Maeterlinck's use of the supernatural applies to "L'Intruse" alone. I credited him with perceiving the same fine qualities in "L'Intérieur" and "Les Aveugles." now gather that he did not mean to say that " Mr. Kipling did it (the gradual accumulation of terror) better "than Maeterlinck. I subjoin two extracts-the first from his article, the second from his letter.

Also, I

1. "Maeterlinck's style is more poetic than theirs (¿.., Kipling's and Maupassant's), but less convincing."

2. "Such practised literary craftsmen as Maupassant and Kipling give their readers a stronger shudder than does the mystical Maeterlinck."

Surely the strength of effect produced is the essence of success in this class of writing!

On one point alone I can meet Mr. Ropes on his own

ground. He says he is unable to grasp, "the strange

stillness of the soul which is felt in Maeterlinck's works." I agree. But this, being purely a question of feeling, is hardly a subject for argument; especially with an antagonist who confesses to a weakness for "the hard realities" of life.

SIR, Mr. Ropes is surely not serious in saying that he does not know what is meant by "the stillness of the soul" in literature. It means the higher repose. In the case of Maeterlinck it also means, I think, purity of emotion, a sweet resignation to destiny, the atmosphere of abstract love, the contemplative mind dwelling humbly on great things. Mr. Ropes will find in Ibsen's last play everything that "the stillness of the soul" does not mean. When We Dead Awaken is a very pitiful revelation of soul panic. I am, &c., V. B.

Brighton April 9, 1900.

The Missing Word.

SIR,-In reference to Mr. Arnold White's letter in the last number of the ACADEMY, I wish to point out that the word Briton is of Gaelic origin, and that the name Britannia was given to a country in which there was a large Gaelic population. The term Anglo-Saxon, which Mr. White uses, is one which excludes the "Celtic fringe altogether, all Irish, Highland Scots, and Welsh, and as a Welshman I wish to protest against it. Why not AngloCeltic ?-I am, &c., ANCIENT BRITON.

Our Weekly Prize Competitions.

Result of No. 29 (New Series).

66

LAST week we offered a prize for the best suggestion as to a new word to cover all British subjects, whether English, colonial, or Irish; the request to do so being put to us by Mr. Arnold White. Among the names suggested are" Victorians" (by many competitors), "Britirishers " (by three), Imperials," Queensmen," Homelanders," Britannialists," Empirists," "Britonians," "Freelanders," "Britempirists," "Imperions," and " Englanders." "Vic-torians" is in many ways the more satisfactory word, but it is ruled out by the fact that the word is already in use as a term to describe natives of Victoria, in Australia, a vast tract of country. "Britirishers" is too long. "Imperials' " could never withstand the competition of the tuft of beard which bears the same name. "Queensmen would have little point when a king was on the throne. "Homelanders" means nothing in particular. "Empirists is too near "Empiric." "Freelanders" is not expressive enough. Altogether we are inclined to consider "Englander" the best word, although the participation of Ireland is not apparent in it. We have therefore sent a cheque for a guinea to the Rev. F. G. Cole, 42, Blenheim-street, Prince's-avenue, Hull, with whom the word "Englander" originated.

H. W., Malton, writes: "I send a few ideas for Competition 29. 1. John Bullies.

2. Rad-easy-uns.

3. Semi-colonists (this last contains the two-fold suggestion of being unaggressive,' but never able to reach a full stop !).

4. Bigger-Burghers, might also do to counteract the Little Englanders

As a name for the Institution to which these gentlemen belong I propose the Lowly Roaming Empire"

Replies received from F. A., Leeds; A. R., Manchester; G. S., Aberdeen; F. E. W., London; D. E. B., London; G. P. B., London; A. H., Southport; M. E., London; M. M. E., London; M. H., London; G. E. P., London; A. W., London; L. H., London; G. W. S., London; M. A, Eastbourne; M. C., London; E. G. F., London; E. A. H., London; A. T., London; D. S., London; M. M. R., Liverpool; R. F. M'C., Whitby; G. S., Eastbourne ; B. A. S., London; E. B., Liverpool; A. T. R., Glasgow; M. B, Derby; G. E. M., London; R. M., Glendevon; E. H., London; E. M., Stirling; G. L. F., London.

Too late to compete: A. J. S. (St. John's Wood), telegraphs"Kinland and Kinlander."

Thel's MSS. for Special Competition were duly received.

Competition No. 30 (New Series).

In the Globe of a few days ago was this paragraph: "A hostess who had a mania for setting her guests intellectual puzzles, by way of keeping them quiet in the evening, offered the other day a prize for the best parody of any well-known proverb. The painful frowns that at once gathered on the faces of the company suggested to one of the guests a brilliant idea 'It is not the scowl,' he said, 'that makes the skunk.'" The example given is not a very good one, but it illustrates the game. The historic example is, perhaps, Lewis Carroll's advice to writers: "Take care of the sense and the sounds will take care of themselves. We offer a prize of a guinea to the author of the best parody of a proverb.

RULES.

Answers, addressed "Literary Competition, THE ACADEMY, 43, Chancery-lane, W.C.," must reach us not later than the first post of Tuesday, April 10. Each answer must be accompanied by the coupon to be found in the first column of p. 320, 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.

Whyte-Melville (G. J.), Tilbury Nogo

(Unicorn Press) (Putnam's Sons)

..(Ward, Lock) 3,6

Chaffers (W.), Marks and Monograms on European and Oriental Pottery and Porcelain. Revisea and edited by Frederick Lichfield. Niuth Edition (Gibbings)

New Novels are acknowledged elsewhere.

Special cloth cases for binding the half-yearly volume of the ACADEMY can be supplied for 18. each. The price of the bound half-yearly volume is 88. 9d. Communications should be addressed to the Publisher, 43, Chancery-lane.