satire; he is repellently alive. Old Damarel, the violinmender, is surrounded with an exquisite tender sentiment. The failure among the characters is certainly Lister; Lister is a figure set up, but not breathed upon with the breath of life. The minor characters are admirable. And the writing, the wit, the observation are admirable. Mr. Wedmore may have done a better book than this, but we doubt. It is a novel about an artist written by an artist for artists. Slight, minute and delicate, it will yet float surely and conspicuous, on the vast grey unimportant sea of modern English fiction.

Notes on Novels.

[These notes on the week's Fiction are not necessarily final. Reviews of a selection will follow.]

THE WEST END. BY PERCY WHITE. A study of smart society. Writing in the person of the shrewd, crippled, private secretary of John Treadaway, jam manufacturer and merchant prince, Mr. White tells us how that worthy deliberately sets up his tabernacle in Belgravia, and invades Society. It is a capital study, full of satire and observation of something more than the "smart" order. "This is a big scheme we've got in hand, Rupert," says the jammanufacturer, as he watches the builders finishing a winged lion over the porch of his new home, "a deuced big scheme." (Sands & Co. 6s.)

FATE THE FIDDLER.

BY HERBERT C. MACILWaine.

The author of that excellent story of Australian life, Dinkinbar, again gives us Australia for a background. "A stretch of untilled, untouched Australia" lies before us in the first paragraph, and in the second we are told that this is "the simple tale of the struggles of two ordinary young Britons-against the elements, including man, their latest born-to make a living, and, if it might be, a fortune, in their adopted country." (Constable. 6s.) A MAN: HIS MARK.

By W. C. MORROW.

A short, strong novel by the author of The Ape, The Idiot, and Other People. Adrian Walden finds himself snowed up in his hut under Mount Shasta with a lady whose leg has been broken in a coach accident. The two are imprisoned for weeks by an avalanche and the continued snowfall. A situation of great delicacy is delicately treated, and a very careful study is made of the two characters, who discover that they have had much to do with the shaping of each other's lives. (Grant Richards. 3s. 6d.)

In his first chapter Max O'Rell discusses the charge brought by Englishmen against Frenchmen that they do not know the meaning of the word "home"; but the chapter ends on this subject, and has no real connexion with the story, which is a study in the blighting effects on home life of social ambition. Philip Grantham, A.R.A., is serenely happy in St. John's Wood until, in the desire to see his beautiful wife reign as a West End hostess, he neglects painting and invents a shell which is purchased by the French and Russian Governments. We follow Philip and his wife through the maze and blaze of Belgravia life. Philip's diseased ambition runs its course, and love and art and St. John's Wood are restored. (Warne & Co. 3s. 6d.)

"The Extraordinary Adventures of an Ordinary Man " is the sub-title of this novel by the author of Mrs. John Foster. The hero wakes up, commonplace and fancy-free, on his thirtieth birthday, to find that a capital sum of £75,000, on which he has hitherto had the interest, is to be made over to him. He is an ordinary man when he goes to Lord Carnforth's bank to draw this sum; his "extraordinary adventures" begin when he finds that the money has been drawn by a young lady professing to be his private secretary. The developments are many and curious. (Heinemann. 6s.)

A LADY OF THE REGENCY. BY MRS. STEPNEY RAWSON. The story is laid in London and Northumberland, and opens about the year 1813 in George the Third's court. Many historical personages are introduced. Byron, for instance, leaning on the arm of Lord Alvanley, is encountered on page 153. Says Lady Curragh to Alvanley : "For this renewal of my friendship with Lord Byron I thank you. You always bring me wit; to-day you bring me soul as well." (Hutchinson. 6s.) BEQUEATHED.

BY BEATRICE WHITBY.

BY MORLEY ROBERTS AND MAX MONTESOLE. "Being the Adventures of Sarif ak Rarasy, the Circassian, in Stamboul." Local colour and vernacular are put in with a generous hand: "Inshallah,' added the Softa, the Padisha has now discovered the perfidy of his viziers, and he will send them to Djihenna with their Muscovite paymasters.' 'What can you expect, after all,' whispered a tchibouk merchant, from the Farmacion?'" The story is full of action and footnotes. (John Long. 6s.) THE DEVIL'S KITCHEN. By A. B. Louis.

This is one of those perplexing novels in which the title re-appears as the title of a novel in the story. However, it is a readable tale, introducing a publisher and his clients, one of whom, maddened by the rejection of his stories, committed a murderous assault on a wrong man, and was "detained during Her Majesty's pleasure." He was consoled by the merciful delusion that he had climbed the ladder and was a great novelist. To visitors to the asylum he would loftily say: "Never despair. If I had given in, I should not be where I am now." (Sands. & Co. 3s. 6d.)

A GENTLEMAN IN KHAKI,

BY JOHN OAKLEY.

Chapter headings like "How Ladysmith was Saved" and "The Tangle of the Tugela " prepare the reader for a war story full of the actualities of the present struggle in South Africa. (Chatto & Windus. 1s.)

Tinkering the Bible.

THERE has been a notion abroad in recent years that the language of the Bible, as we have it in the Authorised Version of 1611, needs to be modernised in order that it may make a lively appeal to modern minds. But the efforts made in this direction have not been very hopeful. Even the Revised Version was, for most people, a gigantic bubble, which burst as soon as born; and the small private attempts which have been made since have burst as quietly in its wake. The latest product of this wellmeaning crusade is Dr. Henry Hayman's work, entitled The Epistles of the New Testament: an Attempt to Present Them in Current and Popular Idiom (A. & C. Black). We propose to examine Dr. Hayman's aim and execution with some care, for we believe that such enterprises as his are at least useful in demonstrating the impregnability of a work of literary art like the Authorised Version; and that they exhibit certain fallacies which it is well to dissipate. Dr. Hayman's professed aim in re-wording the Epistles has been "to present them in current and popular idiom." That he presents them in no such garb is the first conviction that is forced upon the reader. Dr. Hayman employs neither the words nor the constructions of everyday life. The mere retention of "thou" and "thee," of "art" and "hast," of "couldest" and "wouldest," is a clear breach of the design, these words forming no part of current and popular idioms. It is quite a common thing for Dr. Hayman to replace clear English by difficult English, and a familiar construction by a rare one. Thus, Paul's simple sentence, "For he that is dead is freed from sin," becomes, in Dr. Hayman's version, "For the dead to sin is enfranchised from its power"-a change, surely, in the very opposite direction to that proposed in the author's plan. Again, the words in Romans x. 21: "All day long I have stretched forth my hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people," become: "All day long I stretch forth my hands towards a people refractory and recusant." Here, again, the change seems to be precisely antagonistic to the aim announced. Two adjectives are latinised, and the idiom which, in the Authorised Version, places them before the noun they qualify is exchanged for an idiom, certainly less current and certainly less popular, which places them after that noun. Concerning the purely literary effect of the changes we need say nothing. An astonishing example of Dr. Hayman's work is afforded by a comparison of the two versions of a passage in the Epistle to the Philippians, which everyone knows by heart:

faulty construction for a good; and he simply underpins and brings down the rhetorical scheme of the passage which he professes to improve. For that Dr. Hayman hopes to improve every sentence he alters seems clear. Otherwise he would not expressly declare in his Preface that some phrases in the Authorised Version cannot be improved upon, and will therefore be retained unaltered in his own version. However, this admission prepares the reader to witness Dr. Hayman's courage rather than his discretion, for there are few passages on which he does not exercise his skill. Even Paul's entreaty to the believers at Corinth, "Greet one another with an holy kiss," becomes, "Exchange a kiss of sanctity with one another," leaving us astonished by the moderation which did not impel him to write: "Exchange osculations of sanctity with one another." Dr. Hayman's handling of the Authorised Version is seen at its boldest when he alters the words "encompassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses" into "encircled with so vast a cloud of attesting spectators." "Encompassed" is not necessarily encircled," and "witnesses means (precisely) "attesting spectators," with the obvious advantage that it is a comely English word instead of two words of Latin complexion and little charm. The sacrifice of charm is the unvarying feature of modernised versions of the Bible. Take this example :

AUTHORISED VERSION. Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up,

Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil;

Rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;

Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things.

DR. HAYMAN.

Charity is long suffering, is kindly, is void of envy, is no braggart, is not inflated, preserves decorum, avoids self-seeking, is not irritable, imputes not the evil done, has no joy at evil doing, but re- joices on the side of the truth; puts up with all things, gives credit for all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

The

These examples of an effort to modernise the Bible language are so surprising, that it may be well to seek further light on Dr. Hayman's actual intentions. most significant sentence in his Preface is this: "I have striven to answer to myself the question, How would these fathers of our faith have expressed themselves, if the vernacular English of our own day had been their medium of expression?" This calls for thought. The vernacular should mean the whole vernacular, or it is nothing. To credit Paul, Peter, and James, in imagination, with a knowledge of only those English words of to-day which approximately reproduce the meanings of their own words. would be to beg the question. It would be to raise the question of correct translation, whereas the question raised by Dr. Hayman is clearly that of expression in its largest sense. If we really are to inquire how Paul would have expressed himself in the English vernacular of to-day, we must begin by imagining that he possessed as full a knowledge of that vernacular as ourselves-his readers. We must also-it is inevitableimpute to him a knowledge not only of all our words, but of all they stand for; in a word, we must credit him with

the same heritage of knowledge as we ourselves enjoy, including (oh, confusion!) our knowledge of himself derived from the Authorised Version. We might thenpace all absurdities-receive Paul's Epistles from his hand in the English vernacular of to-day, and hear him draw his illustrations from such vernacular facts as the rotundity of the earth, wireless telegraphy, forbidden incense, and the prosyletising zeal of Mr. Mallock. And a daring writer might conceivably endeavour to personate this modern St. Paul, and re-think and re-write his Epistles for men and women of to-day. This would be, at any rate, a logical attempt to show-what Dr. Hayman proposes to show, but does not-how Paul of Tarsus would have expressed himself "if the vernacular English of to-day had been his medium of expression." But the result would not be the Bible. The Bible was written in certain periods and in certain languages, and all that can be done is to translate a given portion from the language in which it was first written into the language in which it is proposed to be read, taking verbal equivalents as we find them, and submitting to the disadvantages arising from differences in the knowledge, tastes, and ideals of the two periods. The Authorised Version was a supremely good example of translation, because it not only did this task work, but took on a rare beauty and energy of its own. Moreover, it carried out Dr. Hayman's own plan: it presented the Bible in "current and popular idioms." That the need for such presentation was infinitely greater in 1611 than it is in 1900 does not need to be demonstrated to anyone acquainted, however slightly, with the development of the English language. Since 1611 the language has grown enormously, but has altered little; and it is certain that Shakespeare, in the Elysian Libraries, reads The Ring and the Book with far greater ease than he reads The Romaunt of the Rose. But granting that the Authorised Version presents the Bible in an English form which has been devitalised by the changes that have come over the language in the interval of nearly three centuries, and that these changes justify an attempt to present the Bible in the "current and popular idioms" of to-day, still the mere substitution of new idioms for old is a very small part of the matter. Language is inseparable from thought, and the thought of the few is warmed and coloured by the thoughts of the many, and things possible in one age are impossible in another. In 1611 English faith was at its strongest. The language had passed triumphantly out of its old inflectional stages, and had fulfilled itself in Shakespeare's Plays. It had reached, as far as we know, its utmost serviceableness to literature, and literature had reached its utmost power to employ the language. The beauty of words was felt, and verbal melody was a habit rather than a secret. As the child of his age, Shakespeare wrote his plays. As children of their age, the translators of the Bible produced the Authorised Version. They had the perceptions and immunities which belong to a great literary epoch. We cannot wholly account for their success: the wind bloweth where it listeth. But it is as unwise to tamper with a Bible which our age could not have produced as it is to meddle with cathedrals which our age could not have built. The value of a Version is not so much a question of idioms as of idiosyncrasy, and we must not change the one until we can match the other. In a new fervour of the race we may build a new York Minster or a new Bible; but-the wind bloweth where it listeth. This lesson is sufficiently enforced by Dr. Hayman's book, in which, side by side, we may read:

Things Seen.

"A Certain Priest."

He had a way of sitting a little apart from the rest, with his head thrown back and his profile in strong relief. From this you will remark that he has a profile. No man who had not would dare to sit like that. In this position he was wont to listen to other people's sermons-meditating, perchance, his own.

Nature had been very kind to him. She had mirrored in his face and form the beauty of his soul. She had given him, moreover, a haunting voice, and the power of reaching others.

There is a picturesque way of doing most things. And that was his way.

This is how he said the Creed. I have sometimes thought that he was the only man I ever knew who understood how to say it, and how to stand, and look, when he did say it.

He wheeled slowly round to the East-his head raised slightly, his thin hands loosely folded. At the Incarnation, Death, and Burial he knelt instinctively, as the natural expression of the humiliation he so evidently felt. At the sound of the "Resurrection" the whole man thrilled with a sense of its triumph and wonderful love. Throughout the whole, his eyes were fixed on the cross on the altar before him. . . . And yet, somehow, I thought he saw beyond. . . . He always remained facing eastward a little longer than anyone else, and he always lingered a moment on "The Life of the World to come." . . I used to wonder what those words meant for him. . . . But now I know. . . . One day I heard him tell the children that the New life would be just the Old made perfect . . . The Old made perfect! Amen to that, dear Stranger.

The Automatic.

I FOUND I had to change at the Junction.

There were a good many people waiting on the other platform; evidently an excursion. Two-an old labourer and a child-had wandered across to my side. All the man's remaining vigour was in his grip on the little one's hand. She seemed to be a grandchild he was pleasuring. They were on the return journey, yet the child was plainly unsatisfied.

They wandered up the platform and stopped by an automatic machine.

"See y'ere, dearie, what's this?"

"There's sweets in that. You puts a penny in there an' they comes out there!"

The child looked up; she grasped the nature of the machine at once.

Swinging heavily forward she watched the box, then the man's face, eagerly.

"I knows. Put it in."

"Where do you put the penny in? Show me."

She tilted her face up to the old man's, and then she began to foresee disappointment. Her words poured forth fast and furious.

"Put it in. Put it in now."

Then shrilly: "Ain't yer got one? Carn't I 'ave none?" The old man pulled her towards the subway, and I saw no more of them.

Correspondence.

Mr. Andrew Lang on Fiction.

SIR,--That Mr. Lang contemns the literature which takes the form of a novel it is impossible to doubt. That he is unable to estimate its value, to classify it or in any way to realise what that very comprehensive word "fiction" actually embraces, is equally impossible to doubt after reading "The Supremacy of the Novel," from his pen, in the Westminster Gazette of May 7. But with this contempt there are not a few amazing statements in the article, made to further some kind of argument that the world of letters has fairly gone to the dogs because of the prevalency of the novel (not frankly said, but insinuated), that display a want of discrimination really provoking from a man of letters.

Mr. Lang extensively quotes Bulwer-Lytton's summingup of the literary market of his time, and asserts "all this might have been written to-day." With the exception of some vague generalisations, the remarks are wholly inapplicable to our day.

Mr. Lang further writes: "Greece and Rome and preRevolutionary Europe produced literature in all its species while we tend to produce novels only." In Mr. Andrew Lang's lifetime there have probably been more works of philosophic value, historic accuracy, and poetic merit (of this last, excluding the sixteenth century) than at any other period of the world's history. That novels of a paltry value by the side of these have been produced to an overwhelming number and purchased by the public only signifies that to-day there is an immense population that in past generations never read anything. This taste of the crowd neither augments nor diminishes the number of serious readers, unless, indeed, towards reading at all, which it must be admitted is always a step to better things from the grosser pastimes of illiterate ages. But the public that reads serious literature is equally greater in number than at any other period. It may be asserted that such writers as Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, Bain are more universally read than ever were Descartes, Locke, and Condillac. We know that Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold, Emerson have been sold in immense numbers. Such fine novels as may be counted literature have not had a much greater sale. Mr. Lang confuses things. We have never heard that such masters as Nathaniel Hawthorne, George Meredith, and Henry James had the extensive sales Mr. Lang seems to envy, peculiar to certain novels of the moment. Popular work in all branches finds a big market not less than cheap and inferior goods of other manufacture. It is a pity to confound this merchandise with Art be it fiction in prose or verse.

Such books as have been written by Mr. Meredith or Mr. Henry James rise above, indeed tower above, in every kind of way, the expositions of subjective philosophers, metaphysical meanderings, tirades of criticism, or catalogues of historical events Mr. Lang deplores as no longer read.

Would Mr. Lang have us believe that Lost Leaders is of the stuff, shall we say, of Tit-Bits (yet both come under the heading of journalism), and force us to cry out at its immense sale? Nevertheless, Lost Leaders hardly has the sale of Tit-Bits.

A great novel is an amazingly difficult article to produce,

An Index Expurgatorius of Words. SIR,-Your correspondent "H. B. " does not seem to me quite accurate in stating that one of the words prohibited by Mr. W. Cullen Bryant in his Index Expurgatorius is the appellation "esquire." There is nothing to show that Mr. Bryant objected to the use of this word in any one of its legitimate meanings. In the list given in the ACADEMY of April 28 it was the abbreviation "Esq." that Mr. Bryant wished to place in the Index. It is obvious that "Esq. covers a much wider range of ideas than "esquire." To the different categories of persons who, according to "H. B.," are alone entitled to use the designation "esquire" should, I think, be added officers in the army of the rank of captain or above it, together with those holding corresponding relative rank in the navy, who are designated as esquires in the Queen's commission. I do not feel quite certain of the ground on which bachelors of divinity, law, and physic base their claims to the appellation.

Nearly every word in the list will admit of some discussion, but want of space forbids this excursion into the realm of academics. Lengthy, as you well point out, is by no means a vulgar synonym of long. To take a single instance, Walter Pater, whose fastidiousness in the choice of words amounted almost to a weakness, says, in speaking of Mrs. Humphry Ward: "In truth, that quiet method of evolution, which she pursues undismayed to the end, requires a certain lengthiness" (Essays from the Guardian, p. 60). The use of the word on this occasion is justified by the fact that no other could, even approximately, so well express the writer's meaning. And so with many others tabooed by Mr. Bryant.-I am, &c.,

Henry Lawson.

W. F. P.

SIR,-In view of the vast amount of rubbish which has recently been poured out under the name of patriotic verse, perhaps some of your readers might not object to my bringing before their notice a poem which is probably unknown to them, and which possesses no less poetic ring than true patriotism. Written some few years ago, before there was any indication of a grand Imperial struggle, Henry Lawson's "Star of Australasia" must be regarded as prophetic of the present colonial military enthusiasm. It was published in 1896 in a volume entitled In the Days when the World was Wide, but the book, though containing many good things, would be difficult to buy in this country. The poem to which I make special reference begins with the assurance that the day will come when Australasia will be able to forget the sordid first chapter of its history, and that "The Star of the South shall rise in the lurid clouds of war." It continues:

There are boys out there by the western creeks, who hurry away from school

To climb the sides of the breezy peaks or dive in the shaded pool,

Who'll stick to their guns when the mountains quake to the tread of a mighty war,

And fight for Right or a Grand Mistake as men never fought before;

When the peaks are scarred and the sea-walls crack till the furthest hills vibrate,

And the world for a while goes rolling back in a storm of love and hate.

There are boys to-day in the city slum and the home of wealth and pride

Who'll have one home when the storm is come, and fight for it side by side,

Who'll hold the cliffs 'gainst the armoured hells that batter a coastal town

Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crushing down.

And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day,

Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away

Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun,

And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost or won

As a mother or wife in the years to come, will kneel, wild-eyed and white,

And pray to God in her darkened home for the " the fort to-night."

men in

The poet goes on to tell that in the struggle Australasia will awake to feel and see the "soul of the world," and that in success or adversity their lungs will inbreath a larger life.

They'll know the glory of victory-and the grandeur of defeat.

Every boy will be wanting to fight; the children will "run to the doors and cry, 'Oh, mother, the troops are come!'

And fools, when the fiends of war are out and the city skies aflame,

Will have something better to talk about than a sister or brother's shame,

Will have something nobler to do by far than to jest at a friend's expense,

Or to blacken a name in a public bar or over a back-yard fence.

And this you learn from the libelled past, though its methods were somewhat rude

A nation's born where the shells fall fast, or its lease of life renewed.

We in part atone for the ghoulish strife, for the crimes of the peace we boast,

And the better part of a people's life in the storm comes uppermost.

SIR,-I cannot see that the missing word is wanted. Why are we to nickname ourselves? Let others call us Englanders, Britishers, and so forth. I was born of Irish parents at the Cape of Good Hope. I have spent most of my life in India, where my children were born. What are the two ties which bind sons and daughters of the Empire together? Firstly, we are all under the rule of an English Queen (who, I may say in passing, does not call herself an Anglo-German!); secondly, we all, with varying accents and idioms, speak the English language; collectively, to ourselves and others, we are English. St. Paul, though a Hebrew of the purest blood, was not ashamed to be a Roman citizen, nor was Tarsus despised because she was a libera civitas of Rome. The "missing-word" notion is a new one. No Anglo-Indian wished to be labelled Hiberno-Indian or Scoto-Indian. We are all of us English in our loyalty to our English Queen and her English empire, and I am, for all my Irish origin, colonial birth and Indian domicileAN ENGLISHWOMAN.

Prof. Santayana's work, The Sense of Beauty, published three years ago, was a stimulating performance, though its metaphysics, like all metaphysics, were open to much criticism. Into this volume Prof. Santayana has gathered a number of papers which he hopes tend in their various ways to uphold the idea that religion and poetry are identical in essence, and differ merely in the way in which they are attached to practical affairs. "It would naturally follow from this conception that religious doctrines would do well to withdraw their pretensions to be dealing with matters of fact. That pretension is not only the source of the conflicts of religion with science and of the vain and bitter controversies of sects; it is also the cause of the impurity and incoherence of religion in the soul, when it seeks its sanctions in the sphere of reality, and forgets that its proper concern is to express the ideal." It will be seen that Prof. Santayana's book at least contains bold and interesting thoughts (Black. 6s.)

TWENTY FAMOUS NAVAL BATTLES:

SALAMIS TO SANTIAGO.

BY EDWARD KIRK RAWSON.

This is a revised edition of the author's well-known work, The Development of Navies during the Last Half Century. The growth of foreign navies in the last ten years has necessitated the elimination of the chapter dealing with this branch of the subject, which would require a separate volume. The development of our own navy from 1840 to the present date is now the sole subject dealt with. A chapter on "Lessons of Recent Naval Wars" forms part of the added matter. (Seeley & Co. 5s.)

AMONG THE BIRDS OF NORTHERN

Mr. Dixon's ornithological books are becoming numerous. His present volume may be considered as the counterpart of his Bird Life in a Southern County. In it he devotes much space to comparisons between the birds of the northern shires and those of the south of England. For the number and interest of its birds Mr. Dixon unhesitatingly gives the palm to the north as against the south, and he makes many comparisons between the birds of the two districts. The subject of migration, too, naturally occupies far more space here than in the earlier and companion volume. (Blackie & Son. (Blackie & Son. 7s. 6d.) THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

BY THOMAS CARLYLE.

Messrs. Macmillan's "Library of English Classics" is growing apace. We have had many "dainty" editions of masterpieces, but those who desire something in the nature of a library edition, handsome, spacious, and yet light in the hand, will do well to acquire the volumes in this "Library"; they are excellent specimens of the art of book-building. (Macmillan. 2 vols. 78.)