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DISCOVERY 



the deep greens, thick hedgerows, sparkHng showers, 

 and drawn-out sunsets of an English summer, which 

 has an incomparable freshness and fragrance. It 

 is not surprising that our literature is imbued with 

 an unusually distinct national spirit ; that many of 

 our most beautiful lyric poems. Summer is i-cumen in, 

 Milton's L'Allcgro, Keats' Ode to Autumn, could have 

 sprung from no other people or countryside than our 

 own ; that our finest narrative poetry from Chaucer's 

 Canterbury Tales to Masefield's Reynard the Fox teems 

 with the sights, sounds, customs, and individuals 

 peculiar to our country ; that the greatness of Vanity 

 Fair lies in its unconsciously expressed attitude of 

 the Britisher to life rather even than in the gentle 

 irony with which it attempts to expose that attitude ; 

 and the greatness of Far from the Madding Crowd in 

 the beauty of the wide spaces of Dorsetshire, which is 

 revealed not so much in direct description as in the 

 conversations and thoughts of the native characters, 

 which have been moulded by them. 



his pain, is intent on securing the woman a happy 

 future, and the woman is equally intent on preserving 

 her honour and following her lover to death : 



Ant. One word, sweet queen : 



Of Caesar seek your honour, with your safety. O ! 



Cleo. They do not go together. 



Ant. Gentle, hear me : 



None about Caesar trust but Proculeius. 



Cleo. My resolution and my hands I'll trust ; 

 None about Caesar. 



When Shakespeare wrote these magnificent lines, 

 he wrote them for an English audience, and he drew 

 a picture, full of the English sense of chivalry, of his 

 ideal Englishman and his selflessness under stress of 

 terrible emotion, of a type which he knew would 

 appeal to other members of his race as well as to 

 himself. And yet, could any scene be truer to the 

 high emotions and aspirations of mankind in all lands 

 and ages ? 



With all our superficial differences in character, we 

 share with one another the main instincts and intuitions 

 of humanity, and the man who knows himself is most 

 capable of understanding, and sympathising with, his 

 fellow human beings. This realisation may, perhaps, 

 be applied without stretching a point to literature of a 

 strong national trend. One nation is as much part 

 of the world as one individual is part of a nation. 

 If an individual writer is true to intuitions arising out 

 of racial emotions, he is more likely to be true to the 

 deep underlying emotions of mankind generally than 

 the writer who attempts to be cosmopolitan. The 

 great Greek tragedians are classic examples even to-day 

 of this fact, but no more obvious example could be 

 given than the plays of Shakespeare. As we write 

 these notes the scene of the hero's death in Antony 

 and Cleopatra comes vividly to mind. 



Holding her dying lover in her arms, Cleopatra, 

 half-mad with grief and a woman's passionate desire 

 to save the object of her love with her caresses, says : 



welcome, welcome ! die where thou hast lived : 

 Quicken with kissing : had my lips that power, 

 Thus would I wear them out. 



Antony addresses her as Egypt, and this sudden word 

 sums up the intricacy of the man's attitude to the 

 woman representing the country, the fine and the false 

 ideals, the love of the woman herself, everything, in 

 fact, for which he has lived and is perishing. Then 

 follows a noble passage in which the man, despite 



Last November we drew attention in these notes 

 to the lack of interest amongst our so-called educated 

 classes in the scientific and scholastic achievements of 

 the day. We remarked that the fault lay partly 

 with the public and partly with the research workers. 

 A similar statement must be applied to contemporary 

 literature. In awarding the Hawthornden Prize 

 Mr. Masefield declared that " I am convinced that, 

 if some great wave of encouragement for art comes 

 to these islands, there will come a great wave of 

 artistic effort, which wQl inspire even the most aged 

 of artists to begin anew." At the present moment 

 there is a lamentable lack of encouragement by the 

 public of good creative writing. The fault lies, 

 perhaps, rather with the changes which are affecting 

 us nationally and individually than with the artist 

 or his public. Whatever the cause, an ever-widening 

 gulf is appearing between those writers who set out 

 merely to appeal to the man who wants an easy piece 

 of sentimental drivel to intoxicate his week-end, and 

 the more brilliant set who, in an endeavour to avoid 

 appearing " popular," have become only dull or 

 neurotically sordid and gruesome. This is, of course, 

 particularly true of the novel, the " best sellers " 

 looking to their public and their pockets, and the 

 better class writing more with their heads than with 

 their hearts, and often attempting to gain an atmo- 

 sphere of cosmopolitanism. We feel that, if only 

 some authors will come forward with creative work 

 reflecting the true, the average life and characteristics 

 of our people and the beauty of their islands, and yet 

 showing the changes that are taking place in their 

 traditions and social environment, a remarkable re- 

 nascence in literature may ensue. 



