Books.
Volume 7, 1896, pgs. 390-392
A Wandering Scholar in the Levant, by David G. Hogarth (Murray, 7/6). The author's hope, expressed in his dedicatory notice, that "defects may be balanced by a transient flavour of the East, by a little of its air and light caught here and there in a page," is amply fulfilled. We feel as we journey with him through Anatolia, across the Euphrates, and along its banks into Egypt, and finally into Cyprus, that the charm of the East is upon us, and that, in spite of drought and discomfort, we too would fain be in that land where hurry and rush are unknown, and where the exclamation: "My time! what else should I do with it?" is the answer to a remark on the waste of a whole week spent in haggling over a bargain. The book is full of bright and lively incidents, of graphic descriptions, and of interesting character studies; and is well illustrated by a map of the district, and by photographs taken by the author.
God's Garden: Sunday Talks with Boys, by the Rev. W. J. [William James] Foxell, M.A. (Macmillan & Co., 3/6). We cannot do better than quote a passage from Dean Farrar's introduction to Mr. Foxell's sermons; the Dean possibly appreciates the author's "Talks" even more highly than we do, but who is a better judge than the Dean of Canterbury as to what should appeal to boys, and the best way of reaching them? He says; "In the following pages the boys will find a forcible simplicity, a manly forthrightness, a knowledge of their needs, a fresh and vivacious manner of bringing spiritual and moral truths before them, which cannot but be of definite use to them. Each sermon impresses one brief, clear, and needful lesson, without distracting the attention of readers or hearers, or fatiguing their memory by a multitude of issues. Boys can hardly fail to gain some strength, courage and wisdom from such sermons; and I shall rejoice to see them widely disseminated and warmly welcomed."
Knowledge, Duty and Faith: a Study of Principles Ancient and Modern, by Sir Thomas Dyke Acland (Kegan, Paul & Co., 3/6). Sir Thomas Acland has done a very valuable and timely public service in the production of this volume. We say valuable because he has reduced a subject of so much inherent difficulty as philosophy to the simplest possible forms of expression, to be "understanded" by people who know nothing of the language of the schools, but who are stirred by the natural human curiosity as to what man can know and what man should do. We say timely, because, since the mind of man began to think it has occupied itself with the real and the ideal in, so to speak, rhythmic pulsations. For fully a generation the real has been strongly in the ascendant, and science has advanced by leaps and bounds, pari passu with materialistic thought. But according to that law of rhythmic thinking, which affects the race as truly as the individual, thought is again turning to the ideal. The limitations of the real, with its one possible outcome, that man himself is a congeries of regulated atoms--that there is nothing in the universe but atoms and regulating laws--this doctrine is oppressive to the spirit of man, and there is a strong rebound towards the Platonic conception of the Idea. Thoughtful people, who feel that they know nothing of the history of thought and nothing of the laws of thinking, will find here just the help they want--an introduction to the principles taught by typical thinkers, ancient and modern. Sir Thomas Acland's chapter on Aristotle seems to us especially useful and interesting, and still more so that upon Lotze, whom he describes as having spoken the last word on knowledge and faith and the relation between them. The author has that quality of temperance in thought and word which should distinguish the philosopher; we quote a passage illustrating this quality and showing the practical value of the work in the conduct of life:--"If we are justified in accepting this doctrine, that the validity which belongs to ideas and to laws (of nature and mind) may be distinguished from the reality which belongs to things embodied as matters of experience, some important inferences may be drawn as to modern speculation.
"One suggestion is, that we must be very careful and self-restrained in drawing logical conclusions as to matters of fact from ideas in our minds, especially on moral and spiritual realities, the bearing or relations of which we may only imperfectly grasp by the intellect. We may feel confident that ideas or conceptions in our minds involve some preceding conditions, or some succeeding conclusions. But we cannot infer the reality of such conclusions--though they may correspond to our limited thoughts--especially when they take a negative form.
"On the other hand, while experience brings home to our minds a conviction of the reality of certain facts as known to us by their appearances or phenomena, and further teaches us that facts follow one another (as far as our experience goes) in a regular order, we shall do well to remember that no length of experience amounts to demonstration, still less to the disproof of spiritual convictions resting on grounds beyond our experience."
A chronological table of modern philosophers is a valuable appendix, and so is a list of books at low prices, meant for the help of the students in University Extension Classes, for whose use the volume is intended. We hail a book setting forth a scheme of knowledge, duty, and faith, so distinctly making for righteousness, and recognising the Divine as a fundamental necessity. To criticise the limitations of the work would be to ignore its objects and to forget the class of students for whom it was written. We repeat that the venerable author has done a lasting service to those who will come after him.
The Life of Bishop Ken, by F. A. Clarke, M.A. (Messrs. Methuen, 3/6). A new and short, and, at the same time, sympathetic biography of Thomas Ken is very welcome, for have we not all sung "Awake, my soul, and with the sun," and "Glory to Thee, my God, this night" when we were little children at our mother's knee? And we continue to revere the simple and pious nature of which these hymns are an outcome. The story of Ken is the story of a stormy time: lover of peace as he was, he took his place among the non-juring Bishops, and was deprived in consequence. * [Non-juring Bishops refused to swear an oath of allegiance to William and Mary after their 1688 "Glorious Revolution" against James Stuart.] Innocency and courage were ever the notes which marked him in a period of bitter controversy. The love of this good man for little children was only natural: the two little girls, Frances and Mary, who afterwards became Duchess of Somerset and Lady Brooke, were great favourites of his, and for them he wrote some simple verses, which reveal his tender, childlike heart, "occupied with the kindred loves of children and of heaven." Amid much that is playful in his writing for the little ones, there is manifest the deep reverence felt by the aged saint before the innocence of children--
"With wilful evil not defiled."
This biography of Bishop Ken will be found useful as a brightly written historical sketch, and especially interesting to those who appreciate Ken's position as an Anglican bishop.
The Flower Seller, and other Poems, by Lady [Caroline Blanche Elizabeth FitzRoy] Lindsay (Longmans & Co., 5/-).
Lady Lindsay reaches perhaps her highest note in "Outremer." We wish we had space to quote the description of the missal brought to a convent by a stranger monk, and its effect upon a novice, who
"Knelt to the missal which he deemed
To hold th' incarnate beauty he had dreamed
So oft, so oft! Delectable wild flowers
Damasked each page of yon brave book of hours;
For every prayer
Was scrolled a frame most fair,
Or, ever and anon, a picture, wrought
Of Mary's life, pure as an angel's thought,
Serene as though great Luke himself had fashioned it.
Next, golden words in golden letters writ,
That climbed the page on some unwitnessed stair;
While, best of all, behind them, like the sea
That backs gold-masted fisher-boats--
Or, as th' ethereal anthem backs quaint notes
Of music penned, and through the measure floats--
Or, as the heavens that be
Calm far beyond us, placid o'er our moil--
So th' entrancing restful blue
(The youth had dreamed of through his hours of toil)
Lay spread the whole book through,
Clear as a summer night, fresh as the dawn's own dew."
"Outremer" is this intense blue which we commonly know as lapis lazuli. The passage we have quoted seems to us to strike the highest note in the volume. All the poems are graceful and fresh in sentiment, but they are by no means equal in execution.
Proofread by LNL, Nov. 2020