BRIEFER MENTION
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In Eighth Notes, by H. T. Parker (12mo, 238 pages; Dodd, Mead: $2) the distinguished critic of music and the theatre has collected, from the columns of The Boston Evening Transcript, eight groups of brief essays, characterizations and estimates of men and women in the musical world. With Mr Parker the analysis of qualities is so subtle, and the taste so unerring, that one does not require him to pass judgement, to say "good" or "better." To render justice to seven conductors and at the same time to indicate their peculiar qualities; to do as much for a handful of pianists, singers, violinists; never to be betrayed into accepting appearance for reality; always to be able to express justly and precisely the hidden nature of the complex personalities with which he deals—all these things are within Mr Parker's capacities, and they place him almost alone in American journalistic criticism. The essays are each of two or three pages, little triumphs of compression; they show no signs of the daily rush; and except for one or two stylistic peculiarities they are written with as fine a sensibility as they are conceived. Sensibility, it may be said, when it is added to taste, perception, and dignity, is a priceless quality in criticism. One looks for a companion to this book, so certain, so right, on the men and women of the theatre; they, and Mr Parker's fellow-workers, stand equally in need of it.
What I Saw in America, by G. K. Chesterton (8vo, 297 pages; Dodd, Mead: $3) is in parts as good as the same author's magnificent history of England, and that book was almost all as good as his writings on Dickens. Which means that while his prejudices seem to keep Mr Chesterton alive, he lives to keep alive his great good sense. The book is a critical estimate of England, America, and G. K. Chesterton, some of whose later hobbies bob up distressingly, but not to spoil the whole effect.
The Letters of Horace Howard Furness, edited by Horace Furness Jayne (2 vols., illus., 12mo, 647 pages; Houghton Mifflin: $8). In these letters the distinguished Shakespearean scholar, master of that tremendous editorial task, the New Variorum, is merged in the ardent, rich-natured father and friend, intensely alive, terribly tender-hearted, with a quick unquenchable humour that is for ever sparkling out and tipping the edge of his remarks with silver. It is not surprising that so lambent a spirit could have fused and transfused the dry bones of old commentaries with new and living sap. After reading these letters one not only turns with an involuntary rekindling to his Shakespeare, but one is aware of that expansion of being that comes from intercourse with a fine ripe, fizzing personality, an irradiant intellect to which every moment of living is good grist. His grandson, Horace Furness Jayne, has edited the letters most ably and delicately.
John Burroughs Talks, by Clifton Johnson (illus., 12mo, 353 pages; Houghton Mifflin: $4) stands as an excellent example of the tendency to weave into book-form the insignificant details of the life of a man whose real work is significant. The volume is an undistinguished, gossipy one; it provides one with complete information as to what Burroughs ate for breakfast and as to what sort of a pipe he smoked (if, indeed, he smoked a pipe at all); but it shows little if anything of the inner life of the man and casts no new light upon his theories or philosophy.
