The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Books.

The Making of English, by Henry Bradley (Macmillan, 4/6). Mr. Bradley who has the distinction of being one of the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary, and who has received the degree of Hon. Ph. D. at Heidelberg brings his wealth of philological knowledge to the production of a greatly needed book, simple enough for the schoolboy and erudite enough for the cultivated reader. This is the type of what we hope will be the school book of the future. It is written in clear and simple English and is quite free from pedantry, especially from that form of scholastic pedantry which announces the saying of a difficult thing beforehand, and says it with pomp and ceremony. In The Making of English, on the contrary, words are regarded as interesting subjects in the treatment of which a simple narrative style is appropriate. The Making of English Grammar, Word-making in English, Changes in Meaning, Some Makers of English, are among the subjects treated. The author's breadth of view and delicacy of discrimination appear in almost every page. Here is an example--"English idiom leaves us almost as free to invent compounds of the typed of blue-eyed as to invent new phrases of the type of with blue eyes. When one or both elements happen to be very commonly used in combinations of this kind, the compound adjective, whether as the equivalent phrase. But when this is not the case, the 'parasynthetic' adjective, though still allowable, strikes us as somewhat artificial, and a composition in which such words occur very frequently is apt to sound affected." A comparison with Trench On the Study of Words suggests itself, but Mr. Bradley's is a more philological if less picturesque work. the young student who reads The Making of English, with car and intelligence, will have a discriminating and instructed pleasure in the speech to which he is born.

Matthew Arnold, by G. W. E. Russell (Holder & Stoughton, 3/6). Mr. Russell has done us a great service, and one for which he is peculiarly qualified. As the editor of the two published volumes of Arnold's letters, he has a difficult task of steering between the forbidden biography and the published letters. But there is ample room for the volume which Mr. Russell has given us. He says, "I do not aim at a criticism of the verbal medium through which a great Master uttered his heart and mind; but rather at a survey of the effect which he produced on the thought and action of his age." The conduct, Theology; we feel again as we read that we are in touch with that Matthew Arnold who castigated us of yore to our wrath and our joy. The summer lightning of his satire plays about us once more; and though our first feeling is reminiscent enjoyment, our second is a consciousness that he was a powerful force in educating public opinion, so much so, that what he thought once, we all think now. His views on education are especially interesting to us, giving as they do the wide outlook of a lofty and untrammeled mind; for indeed his duties as Inspector of Schools took shape from rather than modified his own perceptions. This of the teaching of Latin is worthy of consideration to-day: "For the little of languages that can be taught in our elementary schools, it is far better to go to the root at once; and Latin, besides, is the best of all languages to learn grammar by . . . I am convinced that for this purpose the best way would be to disregard classical Latin entirely, to use neither Cornelius Nepos, nor Eutropius, no Caesar, nor any delectus from them, but to use the Latin Bible, the Vulgate. A chapter or two from the story of Joseph, a chapter or two from Deuteronomy, and the first two chapters of St. Luke's Gospel would be the sort of delectus we want; add to them a vocabulary and a simply grammar of the main forms of the Latin language, and you have a perfectly compact and cheap school-book, and yet all that you need." Mr. Russell has done his work with insight, sympathy and enthusiasm, and has put us again in touch with the delicate and forceful personality of his subject. The illustrations, the several homes and the several portraits of Mr. Matthew Arnold, are a great acquisition.

Rossetti, by Arthur C. Benson (English Men of Letters series), (Macmillan, 2/-). Nothwithstanding Mr. W. M. Rossetti's full treatment of his brother's life and work, there is room for Mr. Arthur Benson's works, all the more so perhaps because of the views of an outsider have their points even against those of a near relative possessed of the fullest information. Mr. Benson has however had the benefit of much help from Mr. W. M. Rossetti, and from many who knew and loved the great poet artist. We are much in sympathy with Mr. Benson's point of view. It is true that the common notion of Rossetti is that he was a somewhat morbid and abnormal person; the author presents him as a person of mystic sympathies indeed, but also of much vigour and strong common sense. "In attempting to draw Rossetti's character," says Mr. Benson, "it is necessary to remember that we are not dealing with an English type at all . . . It is difficult for English minds to conceive the remote and dimly apprehended possibilities which for Rossetti lay behind material forms of beauty, and to gauge the depth of the secret of which hints were written in the precise forms of hands and lips and eyes." Again, "He had an intellectual nature of extraordinary vividness, a hard mental force which gained in strength from the extremely definite limitations of his mind." This is how Rossetti taught art at the Working Men's College, a way to commend itself to the members of the P.N.E.U. "'You think,'" he writes, "'I have turned humanitarian perhaps, but you should see my class for the model! None of your freehand drawing-books used! The British mind is brought to bear on the British mug at once, and with results that would astonish you.' His method was characteristic: he put a model--a bird or a boy--before his class and said, 'Do it.' He did not begin with light and shade, but gave his pupils full colour at once." Mr. Benson writes with the enthusiasm proper to all who came in contact with the master.

Hawthorne's New England Romances (Newnes' Thin Paper Classics, 3/6). The publishers are doing great things for our education as a nation by their charming reproductions of the classes, especially by the pocket editions. Messrs Newnes send us a peculiarly dainty and delightful volume containing three of Hawthorne's novels, The House of the Seven Gables, The Scarlet Letter, and The Blythedale Romance, bound in blue lambskin, and really beautifully got up. The portrait of Nathaniel Hawthorne, the frontpiece, is a possession. And what a gain it is to be delicately wooed to read Hawthorne again! How good, for example, that Phoebe Pyncheon should once more take her place amongst us as an ideal maiden for the emulation of English and American girls. What can be prettier than the conversations between 'May and November,' Phoebe and her aunt Hepzibah? The first day of Phoebe's shopkeeping is an exquisite piece of writing.

Quiet Hours with Nature, by Mrs. Brightwen (Fisher Unwin, 3/ ). We are delighted to welcome a new book by Mrs. Brightwen. Few persons have so charming and easy an intimacy with nature. This is not a consecutive volume, but a number of studies of individuals, trees or insects, beasts or birds. All is fish that comes to the author's net, and the value of a book of this kind will be recognised in days when we have come to know that the only way to get at the knowledge of any class is by humble and affectionate study of some individual of the class. This is the sort of nature-study we should all wish to encourage in children:--"For many years I failed to find any seedlings of the common ash, for this reason; the ash has a pinnate leaf, and I naturally looked for something similar in its cotyledon, but, strange to say, it begins life with a simple oval leaf that might belong to a poplar or a pear tree. In the second year it has three leaflets, and in due time it appears with four or five pears of leaflets, and a terminal one, as in the adult tree." the writing and illustrations are alike charming.

A Book of English Poetry for the Young, arranged by W. H. Woodward, in two volumes (University Press, 2/- each). Mr. Woodward has given us two uncommonly nice books of English poetry for the young. The first is intended for preparatory and elementary schools, the second for secondary and high schools. We do not ourselves see any great gap between the two; either book it seems to us would do for either sort of school. In both volumes patriotism and heroism are the notes, and we think right so, for these are the simpler passions which appeal to the young. We are glad to see the ballad of The Brave Lord Wiloughby and The Red Thread of Honour, and many delightful poems old and new. Blake is represented by four poems and his latter-day rival--may we call him so--Stevenson, by two, Windy Nights and The Lamplighter. In Part II., we have the same generous sympathy with what a schoolboy (and a schoolgirl) likes. Newbolt's Admirals All, Henley's England, Kipling's Ballad of East and West, take their places with Shelley's Ode to the West Wind, and the fine passages from Milton, Shakespeare We are glad to see that Longfellow is given his due place in both volumes. The order is chronological, but the little books are without the stiffness of most volumes chronologically arranged. A pleasant page, clear type, and a light and pleasing volume, add to the attractiveness of these nice poetry books. The notes are kept down with a firm hand.

A School Poetry Book, edited by W. Peterson (Longmans, 3/6). Another admirable school poetry book which we have already reviewed in two parts as a junior and senior book. We think we liked it better in that form; the present volume, though in a fine, clear type and generally pleasing format, is a little clumsy and heavy.

Temptation and Escape, by H.C.G. Moule (Seeley & Co., 1/-). In days when we are all apt to ignore, if we do not deny, that prince of the power of the air who, Christianity teaches, has access to everyone oof us, Bishop Moule's spiritual and practical little book should be of real use. This sentence offers a useful key to certain difficulties:--"Is it not at least possible that, as the last pages of the Bible tell us of a glorious and blissful future in terms of symbol and figure, so the first pages of the Bible tell us in the same style of most mysterious past?"

Typed by Sarah Delgado, Nov. 2024