New-York tribune., 1922-07-16

81 scripts discovered among his
papers after his death ought
or ought not to be Published In print
Is one which is again agitating our
literary nobs The manuscript Of
Monmouth" n Juvenile play by Rob
ert Louis Stevenson Of whose ex-
istence few people were aware, was
sold at Christie's on July Ii, and Sir
Sidney Covin has been writing letters
to THE Tines about It: He has not
read the play, but, on principle, he ex-
pfesses an urgent wish that 1t may re-
main unpublished. The inclusion by
MIR. Lloyd Osbourne in his Vailina
edition of Stevenson Of two volumes Of
! hitherto unknown material he stigma
tizes--without having seen the volumes
| or their contents--as "especially i'll
judged"
Mr.. 0sbourne is naturally indignant.
"The Times" in leader on its literary
page. without commenting directly on
the controversy, commits itself to the
statement that mo one can doubt that
the publication of certain juyenilia has
more than once brought discredit on an
author"
Personally I beg leave to doubt it. !
don't believe the posthumous publiea-
tion of juvenilia, however feeble, ever
| J
any harm ab all. Most men of genius
occasionally write rubbish which they
either forget or are too lazy or too
uncritcal to burn. But lasting repu-
tatons are built upon mans best
work, not his worst. Byron, Shelley,
Keats and Coleridge are not "discred-
tied" except in the eyes Of imbeciles,
by the fact that a fair proportion Of
drivel is to be found by those with the
energy to look for it in their COM
complete editions. Nor will Walt
Whitman's reputation suffer because
of the pages of strange bosh which Mr..
Emory Holloway has resuscitated in his
two volumes Of Whtman's "Uncollected
: Poetry and Prose"
Not only can MIR. Holloway's volumes
bring no discredit to Whitman. but
they are of quite obvious interest and
value to Whitman's admirers. About
a great figure we want to know every
thing there is to know, and a student
or biographer should have access 70
all available material. The failures
I and the hasty jottings of q writer are
often as illuminating, psycholog ogicslly
as his masterpieces. If Stevenson were
one Of my favorite authors, and if
ever had occasion to write book about
! him, l should much resent Sir Sidney
Colvin's effort to prevent me reading
Monmouth.
AS for the general public, it SO sell
dom takes its classics off the shelves
that it can be relied upon not to cut
the pages of posthumously published
juvenilia. Haunted by the thought of
Tatham-forever infamous as the de-
stroyer of many of William Blake s
MSS.-I deeply distrust the literary ex-
ecutors who conceived it to be their
function to criticize and suppress.
What curious feature of London
life is the literary dining clubl AL
dous Huxley took me last night to one
of the monthly dinners of the Omar
Khayyam Club, | think it was one of
the most astonishing functions | ever
attended Our names, famous or OBJ
scure, were printed upon the menu
cards. We wore roses in our button
holes, we ate gargantuan meal and
washed it down with claret cup. we
drank the health Of "the master" and
then we listened to speeches. At the
Shorter, Mr.. Augustine Brrell and
others of the great and good, includ
ing John Drinkwater, the guest of the
evening Mr.. Drinkwater made q clever
speech about nothing in particular
rather solemn, and with plenty of mis-
quotations from the. Rubaiyat Then
some one read a queer. complicated
poem, in which Omar and Shelley some
how got mixed up at Marlow-o
Thames. 1t was all very strange, and
the majority of those present were
very, very old. One of the -convives
looked precisely like Charles Dickens.
Michael Sadleir, who was sitting op-
poslte to me, assured me solemnlv that
he was Charles Dickens, and as our
great Victorian expert l suppose he
ought to know.