Transcript

040 - A New Calendar · Reviews

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Speaker 1: Section thirty nine of reviews by Oscar Wilde. This is
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Speaker 1: a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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Speaker 1: Recording by Sarah Jennings, reviews by Oscar Wilde, edited by
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Speaker 1: Robert Ross, Section thirty nine. A new calendar Palmal Gazette,
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Speaker 1: February seventeenth, eighteen eighty seven. Most modern calendars mar the
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Speaker 1: sweet simplicity of our lives by reminding us that each
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Speaker 1: day that passes is the anniversary of some perfectly uninteresting event.
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Speaker 1: Their compilers display a degraded passion for chronicling small beer
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Speaker 1: and rake out the dust heap of history in an
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Speaker 1: ardent search after rubbish. Mister Walter Scott, however, has made
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Speaker 1: a new departure and has published a calendar in which
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Speaker 1: every day of the year is made beautiful for us
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Speaker 1: by means of an elegant extract from the poems of
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Speaker 1: mister Alfred Austen. This undoubtedly is a step in the
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Speaker 1: right direction. It is true that such aphorisms as graves
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Speaker 1: are a mother's dimples when we complain, or the primrose
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Speaker 1: wears a constant smile and captive takes the heart can
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Speaker 1: hardly be said to belong to the very highest order
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Speaker 1: of poetry. Still, they are preferable on the whole to
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Speaker 1: the date of Hannahmore's birth, or of the burning down
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Speaker 1: of Exeter Change, or of the opening of the Great Exhibition.
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Speaker 1: And though it would be dangerous to make calendars the
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Speaker 1: basis of culture, we should all be much improved if
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Speaker 1: we began each day with a fine passage of English poetry.
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Speaker 1: How far this desirable result can be obtained by the
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Speaker 1: use of the volume now before us is perhaps open
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Speaker 1: to question, But it must be admitted that its anonymous
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Speaker 1: compiler has done his work very conscientiously. Nor will we
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Speaker 1: quarrel with him for the fact that he constantly repeats
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Speaker 1: the same quotation twice over. No doubt, it was difficult
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Speaker 1: to find in mister Austin's work three hundred and sixty
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Speaker 1: five different passages really worthy of insertion in an almanac.
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Speaker 1: And besides, our climate has degenerated of late that there
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Speaker 1: is no reason at all why a motto perfectly suitable
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Speaker 1: for February should not be equally appropriate when August has
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Speaker 1: set in with its usual severity. For the misprints, there
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Speaker 1: is less excuse. Even the most uninteresting poet cannot survive
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Speaker 1: bad editing. Prefixed to the calendar is an introductory note
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Speaker 1: from the pen of mister William Sharp, written in that
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Speaker 1: involved and affected style, which is mister Sharp's distinguishing characteristic,
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Speaker 1: and displaying that intimate acquaintance with Sappho's lost poems, which
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Speaker 1: is the privilege only of those who are not acquainted
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Speaker 1: with Greek literature. As a criticism, it is not of
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Speaker 1: much value, but as an advertisement it is quite excellent. Indeed,
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Speaker 1: mister Sharp hints mysteriously at secret political influence and tells
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Speaker 1: us that mister Austin sings with Titurus, yet he has
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Speaker 1: conversed with Annaeus, which we suppose is a euphemistic method
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Speaker 1: of alluding to the fact that mister Austen once lunched
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Speaker 1: with Lord Beaconsfield. It is for the poet, however, not
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Speaker 1: for the politician, that mister Sharp preserves his loftiest pangyric
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Speaker 1: and in his anxiety to smuggle the author of LESCo
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Speaker 1: the Bastard and Grandmother's Teaching into the charmed circle of
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Speaker 1: the immortals, he leaves no adjective unturned. Quoting and misquoting
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Speaker 1: mister Austin with a recklessness that is absolutely fatal to
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Speaker 1: the cause he pleads for. Mediocre critics are usually safe
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Speaker 1: in their generalities. It is in their reasons and examples
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Speaker 1: that they come so lamentably to grief when, for instance,
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Speaker 1: mister Sharp tells us that lines with the natural magic Shakespeare, Keats,
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Speaker 1: and Coleridge are far from infrequent in mister Austin's poems.
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Speaker 1: All that we can say is that we have never
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Speaker 1: come across any lines of the kind in mister Austin's
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Speaker 1: published works. But it is difficult to help smiling when
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Speaker 1: mister Sharp calls gravely upon us to note the illuminative
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Speaker 1: significance of such a commonplace verse as my manhood keeps
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Speaker 1: the jew of morn, And what have I to give?
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Speaker 1: Being right glad that I was born and thankful that
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Speaker 1: I live. Nor do mister Sharp's constant misquotations really help
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Speaker 1: him out of his difficulties. Such a line as a
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Speaker 1: meadow ribbed with drying swaths of hay has at least
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Speaker 1: the merit of being a simple, straightforward description of an
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Speaker 1: ordinary scene in an English landscape, But not much can
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Speaker 1: be said in favor of a meadow ribbed with dying
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Speaker 1: swaths of hay, which is mister Sharp's own version, and
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Speaker 1: one that he finds delightfully suggestive. It is indeed suggestive,
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Speaker 1: but only of that want of care that comes from
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Speaker 1: want of taste. On the whole, mister Sharp has attempted
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Speaker 1: an impossible task. Mister Austin is neither an Olympian nor
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Speaker 1: a Titan, and all the puffing in Pater noster rogue
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Speaker 1: cannot set him on Parnassus. His verse is devoid of
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Speaker 1: all real rhythmical life. It may have the meter of poetry,
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Speaker 1: but it has not often got its music. Nor can
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Speaker 1: there be any true delicacy in the ear that tolerates
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Speaker 1: such rhymes as chord and abroad. Even the claim that
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Speaker 1: mister Sharp puts forward for him that his muse takes
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Speaker 1: her impressions directly from nature and owes nothing to books
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Speaker 1: cannot be sustained for a moment. Woodsworth is a great poet,
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Speaker 1: but bad echoes of Wordsworth are extremely depressing. And when
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Speaker 1: mister Austin calls the cuckoo a voyaging voice and tells
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Speaker 1: us that the stock dove broods low to itself, we
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Speaker 1: must really enter a protest against such silly plagiarisms. Perhaps, however,
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Speaker 1: we are treating mister Sharp too seriously. He admits himself
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Speaker 1: that it was at the special request of the compiler
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Speaker 1: of the calendar that he wrote the preface at all,
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Speaker 1: And though he courteously adds that the task is agreeable
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Speaker 1: to him, still he shows only too clearly that he
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Speaker 1: considers it a task, and, like a clever lawyer or
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Speaker 1: a popular clergyman, tries to atone for his lack of
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Speaker 1: sincerity by a pleasing over emphasis. Nor is there any
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Speaker 1: reason why this calendar should not be a great success.
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Speaker 1: If published as a broadsheet with a picture of mister
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Speaker 1: Austin conversing with Anaeis, it might add in many a
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Speaker 1: simple cottage home and prove a source of innocent amusement
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Speaker 1: to the conservative workingman. Days of the year. A poetic
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Speaker 1: calendar from the works of Alfred Austen, selected and edited
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Speaker 1: by A. S. With introduction by William Sharp, end of
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Speaker 1: section thirty nine. A new calendar