Page images
PDF
EPUB

SIR FRANCIS DRAKE. By E. F. BENSON. (The Golden Hind Series.) Illustrated. John Lane. 12s. 6d. net.

Mr. Benson's volume is the first in a series intended for the general reader of lives of the great explorers. As might have been expected of a distinguished novelist, he is very successful in creating the character of his hero; but his book also shows evidence of considerable research and knowledge, and he avoids the excessive idolising into which it is easy to fall in dealing with so romantic a figure as Francis Drake. This is not to imply that Mr. Benson minimises the romance of Drake's ventures, for he touches in with glowing colours the descriptions of his voyages into unknown seas, his battle with the Armada, and his last expedition to the west on which he died. In these the author can give rein to his descriptive art, but he is no less successful when he describes the intrigues at Court, which were less creditable passages in Drake's life. The whole work is a satisfying record of "the greatest of the Master Mariners of England," and this volume will whet the appetite of the discerning for forthcoming books in this series. We are promised in the near future lives of Frobisher, Hawkins, Raleigh, and several other Elizabethan explorers.

OPEN HOUSE: A BOOK OF ESSAYS. By J. B. PRIESTLEY. Heinemann. 6s. net.

66

The key to Mr. Priestley's attitude to life is probably to be found in the essay in this volume called "High, Low, Broad." He there deals shrewd blows at "Highbrow" and "Lowbrow" people, both of whom, in his view, are "hag-ridden by convictions," and so unable to look at things steadily and simply, to exercise their critical faculty, and to ask themselves whether a thing has any value. This the "Broadbrow" is able to do, says Mr. Priestley, and we may safely accept him as a Broadbrow," not so much at his own valuation in this essay, as from the evidence of all his essays. His attitude is broadly human, his standards of value are neither freakish nor childish, and he finds something of importance to say on any subject he touches, from "Calling on the Vicar" to "A Film Actor." It is true that in one essay he disclaims any " attitude," and says that he has nothing to say. It is true also that he does not offer dogmatic opinions, but he is all the better for that, and his essays are well worth having in book form.

JAMES BRYCE (VISCOUNT BRYCE OF DECHMONT, O.M.). By
H. A. L. FISHER, Warden of New College, Oxford. In 2 Vols.
Illustrated. Macmillan.
32s. net.

The subject of this biography, best known to all of us as " Mr. Bryce," was descended from the Scottish Covenanters, and possessed much of the strength and the unwavering steadfastness of the breed. It was,

perhaps, these qualities which first gave him a sympathy with the American nation, aroused his interest in American affairs and led to his great work for friendship between America and Great Britain. Mr. Fisher rightly lays stress on Bryce's service as British Ambassador at Washington as by far the most important part of his life-work. "He set himself," said President Lowell, of Harvard University, "to charm a people." He succeeded so remarkably that Americans of every class came to regard him as an intimate friend, a fact which Mr. Fisher illustrates by an anecdote of two miners on a railway car in Nevada, whose sole conversation consisted of the statements and confirmations that " Ole man Taft is all right," and " Ole man Bryce is all right." The chapters dealing with Bryce's life in America are extremely useful to the reader who wishes to form a just estimate of the man, and the whole book is a very readable account of the life of a great servant of the State.

FRANCIS THOMPSON: THE POET OF EARTH IN HEAVEN.
R. L. MEGROZ. Illustrated. Faber Gwyer.

net.

By

12s. 6d.

A comparison of Thompson with other poets, and particularly with the seventeenth century "metaphysical poets," is the most original contribution made by the author of this study to our knowledge of the poet. Apart from this, Mr. Mégroz has given his readers new biographical material and a reasoned analysis of Francis Thompson's work and the influences which moulded it. In defending the poet against the attacks of his contemporaries on the score of his murder of the language, Mr. Mégroz's enthusiasm leads him into a defence of Thompson's coined phrases on the ground of "his constant need to create definite imagery for filmy translucencies of thought," and he gives an example: "supportlessly congest." Can anyone seriously defend the use by a poet of such a phrase?

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MURDER: A STUDY IN CRIMINAL PSYCHOLOGY. By ANDREAS BJERRE. Translated from the Swedish by E. Classen, M.A., Ph.D. Longmans. 9s. net. The author of this remarkable work has devoted many years of his life to first-hand study in Swedish prisons, and obviously has very unusual knowledge of his subject. Added to this is the fact that he possesses considerable literary ability which enables him to draw his criminal types with real artistry. In this book he takes three distinct types of murderers and traces their psychological history in great detail, from a strictly scientific point of view. The conclusions he draws should be valuable to all students of criminology and also to people in charge of children, for he shows exactly in what ways and how seriously early bad environment intensifies latent criminality.

DRIFTWOOD.

8s. net.

By WALTER GASTON SHOTWELL.

Longmans.

In this volume the author of " The Civil War in America" deals with a variety of subjects in a number of essays, some biographical, others historical, and some reflective. There is a paper on an attempt to Christianise the American-Indians, and on the massacre of converts that resulted; another on an effort by some German emigrants to America to establish themselves on a communal basis; and a particularly attractive one on Secretary Stanton, Lincoln's Secretary for War, who has not always received due justice from historians.

THE WANDERING SCHOLARS. By HELEN WADDELL, B.A., Late Susette Taylor Fellow, Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford. With Illustrations. Constable. 21s. net.

They kept the imagination of Europe alive held untouched by their rags and poverty and squalor the beauty that had made beautiful old rhyme. And for those of us who are the conservatives of letters, for whom literature obeys the eternal movement of the tides, for whom the heavens themselves are old, there remains the stark simplicity of Terence' In truth they have deserved to be remembered of us.' So writes Miss Waddell as a parting tribute to the medieval Vagantes, whose story she tells here. They are an attractive company, these lovers of classic verse, these wanderers who incurred the wrath of the Church, because they, though clerics, refused to settle down in their cells. Instead, they wandered up and down Europe composing verses of a quality which Miss Waddell shows to have been much higher than is generally believed; and it is as inheritors of the classical tradition rather than as rebels against Church authority that she treats them. Her book is full of scholarship and written in a distinguished style and with imaginative sympathy.

THE LIGHT OF EXPERIENCE: A REVIEW OF SOME MEN AND EVENTS OF MY TIME. By Sir FRANCIS YOUNGHUSBAND, K.C.S.I., K.C.I.E. Constable. 15s. net.

Here are gathered together memories of men and events in the distant places of the world to which it has been Sir Francis Younghusband's joy to penetrate. There are glimpses of Lord Curzon on the Indian frontier, of a British Ambassador in Pekin who "hated answering official letters, and when the Foreign Office became exceptionally exasperated, sent a costly telegram"; and of many other men of note. There is what strikes one as an exceptionally just and detailed estimate of Cecil Rhodes. Sir Francis did not at first altogether appreciate Rhodes, but later came to see his greatness, although not blind to his mistakes. There are also many attractive yarns of adventure in outof-the-way places. It is a very pleasant volume of a kind which unobtrusively adds valuable material to the history of our time.

[ocr errors]

EDMUND BURKE. By BERTRAM NEWMAN. Bell. 8s. 6d. net. In a handy volume, at a reasonable price, Mr. Newman gives his readers not only a comprehensive life of Burke, but also many of his speeches and writings. There have been, of course, a considerable number of lives and monographs of Burke already published, but most of them are either cumbersome or too slight to be of much value, and it is therefore useful to have this volume. In his conclusion, Mr. Newman appears to censure Burke for supporting a political and social order which, even before his own eyes, was beginning to pass away," instead of preparing the way along which England and France were to travel in the century succeeding his death. In effect, this amounts to the curious suggestion-perhaps unintentional on the part of the author-that a man is lacking in vision if he stands for an old order which is falling, because he thinks it better than the new. Must we all, then, become Communists ?

By

THE ROMAN CAMPAGNA IN CLASSICAL TIMES. THOMAS ASHBY, D.Litt. With Illustrations. Benn. 215. net.

So many archæologists have devoted their attention to the City of Rome, that not very much has been written about the Roman Campagna, and the author of the present volume remedies this lack in a comprehensive piece of work. His method is to follow the great Roman roads out from the city, and to describe the villages, villas, aqueducts, bridges, etc., which he reaches, as they would seem to have been in classical times. The book shows evidence of very keen archæological research, and is illustrated by a large number of exceptionally fine reproductions of photographs.

THE GROWTH OF EUROPE THROUGH THE DARK AGES : A.D. 401-1100; A Brief Narrative of Evolution, from Tribal to National Status. By General Sir EDMUND BARROW, G.C.B., G.C.S.I. Witherby. 10s. 6d. net.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Within its obvious limits of space this volume of three hundred pages gives a useful synopsis of the events which contributed to the development of self-governing nations from the loose conglomeration of tribes in Europe at the opening of the period dealt with. At a time however when historical facts are being so much questioned, we may be excused for feeling a little suspicious of such an emphatic denial of the "Legend of Roland as is here given without the citation of any authority. Legend does not always lie, and in any case, this particular legend was more attractive than the dry "facts " offered as an alter

native.

[ocr errors]

No. 502 will be published in October, 1927.

Printed in Great Britain by KOFFEY & CLARK, LTD., Croydon

The

Edinburgh Review

OCTOBER, 1927

No. 502

L

THE ROMANCE OF THE PERSIAN GULF

IN THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES

...the brawling ghost of a past that here never speaks of peace, but only of blood and argument." (Of old Edinburgh, in Rebecca West's novel, "The Judge ".)

OYALTY is sometimes due to places as well as to men,

and especially to those "memory-charged" places, of which Aldous Huxley writes in one of his novels, where the soul of dead events lodges itself; where, among the ghosts of dead days, you are compelled to think of the past. The Persian Gulf is one of those places: a regular sea of memories. If its arid and rocky shores are haunted by ghosts, many of them must be the ghosts of our countrymen; and though its " dead past " belongs to many races, it particularly compels us to think of the Englishmen who helped to make its history. Their fidelity demands no less loyalty on our part; it is good that we should now and again recall their adventures, their victories, their failures, in these romantic waters.

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

The word romantic was, of course, inevitable sooner or later. Some four years ago the writer was travelling that wellworn road from Shiraz to Bushire in the company of Sir Arnold Wilson. If I remember aright we were talking of the "romantic" discovery of oil, after hope had been abandoned by all except

VOL. 246. NO. 502.

All rights reserved.

N

« PreviousContinue »