From the Book Shelf
“In Oldest England,” by G. P. Krapp. Price, 75 cents. Longmans, Green & Co., New York.
Dr. Krapp, a professor of literature in Columbia University, has given us an interesting and valuable book, for both youth and adult. He relates in an interesting way the story of England’s history, from the beginning up to the Norman conquest, using facts, ancient manuscripts, pictures and early literature to tell the story. He makes an appeal to the imagination, to re-create those far-off days, that we may fully realize how our ancestors lived a thousand years ago.
The measure of a people’s civilization, he says, is not in the amount of machinery they possess, but in the thoughts and affections which go to make up character. We cannot give a better idea of the book than the story of England’s first poet, which we give on another page of the Magazine.
“Tales of the Enchanted Isles of the Atlantic.” By Thomas Wentworth Higginson. Price, $1.50. The Macmillan Company, New York.
“Bancroft, the historian, made it a matter of pride that the beginning of American annals was bare and literal,” says the author, and he goes on to prove, through two hundred and fifty-nine interesting pages, that Bancroft was mistaken. To Europeans, undiscovered America lay beyond the great unknown sea of awe, danger and vanishing isles. The islands within sight of European shores, Irish, Breton, Welsh and Spanish, had the glamour of enchantment cast about them. They were the gateways to a sea of mystery. The Canary Isles were discovered before the Christian era and then lost sight of for thirteen centuries. A continent called Atlantis, thought to have been submerged in the Atlantic, had long haunted the imagination of people in Europe and Africa. Solon, the law-giver and poet, wrote a letter in which he said that when a student in Egypt, he was told that the island of Atlantis, was sunk thousands of years ago. This letter was read and studied by both Socrates and Plato. From these traditions, taught by Greek and Egyptian, and believed by the inhabitants of Western Europe, who ever looked out upon the Atlantic, grew the interesting tales which the author gives, such as “Island of Youth,” “Swan Children of Lir,” “Castle of Active Door,” and “Island of Seven Cities.” King Arthur visited one of the Islands, and wrestled with Half-Man, which meant Habit, and when he fought his last battle in the West, and sailed away, it was to Avalon, one of the enchanted isles.
These traditions were great psychic forces, that lured men on until they discovered a new world, more marvelous than Atlantis. A fine book for the story tellers and one bearing directly on American history.