LITERARY INTELLIGENCE
THE announcement of a new and especially sumptuous edition of the works of Mr. Thomas Hardy, to be known as the Mellstock, reminds us that there are other authors to whom the same process might be applied with equal benefit to themselves and to their readers. The collected edition presents a writer's career in an orderly shape and in proper perspective: it first permits a sober and probable judgment to be passed on his achievement. We understand that the works of Mr. Joseph Conrad will shortly be collected and issued as a whole; and this will certainly reveal in a definite manner what is now vaguely felt as to his greatness. We believe also that a definitive issue of the writings of Mr. Max Beerbohm is in contemplation. It is to be hoped that it will be found possible to include the full list of his drawings, in some shape not too incompatible with the rest of the volumes. The Collected Poems of Mr. Walter de la Mare have been announced as in preparation; and this will, we think, mark a definite stage in the career of a poet whose real value is not yet fully appreciated. But there are authors, concerning whom no announcement is made, who might be added to the list with advantage. What might be called "selected-collected" editions of Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton would very likely secure for these writers a much higher place in contemporary literature than current opinion is always ready to give them.
Mr. Chesterton will shortly start for the Holy Land. He intends to write a book about it. The book may, and probably will, be his best, for obvious reasons. It is commonly remarked even by those who think him one of the greatest natural geniuses and, at bottom, one of the wisest men of our time that he has never yet written the books of which he is capable. His best books, such as The Ballad of the White Horse and A Short History of England, are, for all their fine qualities, too slight to give his powers full room for display. As a rule, though he cannot be accused of a lack of energy, he has seemed never to put into a whole book that last effort which is necessary if a work is to be completely satisfactory; he has bothered too little, content to waste his imaginative largesse on hastily-written romances and polemical articles. How good The Flying Inn might have been had a little more trouble been taken with it! In Palestine, away from politics and journalism, with a new and romantic landscape around him, in the home of our religion and on the fields of the Crusades, he may provide the last answer to those who do not see an artist in him.
Mr. Percy Lubbock's edition of Henry James's letters will, it is expected, be published in the spring. Mr. Edmund Gosse, with the letters as a starting-point, has written his memories of James. These will be published, in two instalments, in the London Mercury.
It is five years since James Elroy Flecker died and over three since his Collected Poems were published. Some of his other literary remains will probably appear this year. There will be a collected volume of prose studies and critical articles, and another volume containing his play Hassan, which is awaiting production by Mr. Basil Dean. Some of those who have read this play say that it is the best tragedy since Shakespeare. The claim is not so large a one as it may appear at first sight. There are Ford and Webster. There is Venice Preserved and there is The Cenci, which last is not a great acting play, though it has magnificent scenes in it and contains sublime poetry. He who reflects on the history of the English drama since the age of Elizabeth and James I will be surprised at the paucity of plays of permanent interest, other than comedies, that have been produced.
Monsieur Yves Delage has presented before the Académie des Sciences a most interesting note by Monsieur V. Galippe on micro-organisms in paper. It was, of course, known that paper-making materials of all kinds abounded with these low forms of life, but it was generally assumed that they were destroyed by the chemicals and heat employed during the processes of manufacture. Monsieur Galippe's exhaustive experiments prove that this is not the case, and, moreover, the micro-organisms retain their vitality even in printing paper, apparently irrespective of the lapse of time. Ovoid bacilli were found both free in the mass and in the fibres of papers of all ages.
The method of examination employed was the following: The paper was reduced to fragments and steeped in sterilised distilled water, being frequently stirred. The paper was then dried and again steeped for several hours in sterilised water saturated with ether. After once more drying, cultures were taken from the paper.
Eighteenth-century paper thus treated gave positive results within twenty-four hours, microscopic examination revealing large numbers of rodlike organisms as well as ovoid diplo-bacilli. A leaf from a printed book of 1496 gave a quantity of large micrococci, those from the mass being endowed with movement, and those from the fibre remaining immobile, though preserving the faculty of multiplication. Old Chinese manuscripts and Egyptian papyri dating back ten centuries gave similar results. It is to be noted that exposure to light and air does not appear to have the slightest influence on these organisms.
Although the bibliophile is more particularly concerned in problems relating to fox-marks and the ravages of the borer insect, nevertheless these experiments are of great interest. These investigations, if carried further, may well furnish some explanation of the processes leading to the ageing of paper. From such a vantage-point the technologist might possibly go forward to discover a palliative against the decay of documents and printed paper. Pessimists would probably consider this a doubtful blessing, but, on the whole, it would prove a great boon.