Evening star., 1928-11-03
THE LIBRARY TABLE
BY the BooklOuer

serted Village" and Edward Young with
his Night Thoughts" So Francis
Thompson would be known to few were
it not for his poem THE Hound of
Heaven" which appeared in 1893 in his
first published volume. Francis Thomp-
son is sometimes classed among the
moderns, but the spirit Of his work is
He was born in 1859 and
made several attempts at life work
before he began writing. Having read
De Quincey's Confessions" he began
with opium and became
addicted to the drug. In London he
was reduced to extreme poverty, but
was rescued from both that and the
opium habit by the kindness of Mr..
and Mrs. Meynell. He published only
three volumes of poems, Poems" 1898, ,
which went through five editions in
two years. Sister Songs" G895) and
New Poems" 1897. Essays, reviews
and biographies were his other liter
ary work. He died in London, OF tuber-
culosis, in 1907. Perhaps If his mind
had not been clouded and his life short
ened by opium, Francis Thompson
might have taken place among the
great Victorians.
been estimated by Burne-Jones, Coven-
try Patmore, Wilfrid Blunt, the Mey-
nells and many later critics as one Of
the great poems of the late nineteenth
century. 1t is a mystical poem, in
spired by religious faith and realiza-
ton of universal human struggle. The
personal, autobiographical slgnltlCance
is also evident. 1t represents under the
symbolism of a pursuit the dual nature
of the human soul. in which the divine
continually labors for the possession OF
the errent and elusive individuality.
Il fed Him, down the night and down
the days.
fed Him. down the arches of the
years;
I field Him down the labyrinthine ways
OF my own mind"
Simply as verse, apart from its pro-
found mystical meaning, THE Hound
of Heaven" has a wide appeal. Rush
ing speed. soaring ascent, plunglng de-
scent. airy heights black depths, run
ming laughter" "chasmed fears" flying
lightning" lucent weeping" are all
present to the imagination, illustrating
the artistic motive, apart from the
spiritual.
The volume "Sister Songs" was dedi-
Gated to the young daughters of Thomp-
sons friens, the Meynells, to whom the
was always pathetically grateful Tor
what they had done for him. In TINS
volume and the later New Poems ne
developed that tendency to what seems
obscurity, which makes much
of his poetry difficult to understand. He
made use of coined and distorted words
and unusual meanings for old WORDS
One of his phrases, often ridiculed, Is
'the luminous and volute redundance.
But the later poems cannot be DIS
missed with the charge OF obscurlty.
They are. like "The Hound Of Heaven,
deeply religious in feeling. TO the
Dead Cardinal of Westminster" Is
pathetic plea for intercession from a
lost soul. The mingling of the earthly
and the godlike in man is again the
theme m ANY Saint" The linking OF
the simplest things with the most lofty
the flower with the star, is given beau
tiful expression in THE Mistress OF vi
SION" In his Orient Ode" there is
lode to the Setting Sum-" there is
ecstatic worship of the sun, but only as
the symbol of the Creator. Ultima,
the last poem of the third volume, is in
praise of the higher wisdom of man, the
wisdom which throws light upon his
to God and immortality.
X X X X
Through the pen of one of his charac-
ters, Aldous Huxley, the English novelist
and grandson of the scientist Thomas
Huxley. explains his choice of Point
Counter Point" as the title of his latest
N1to re-
ing characters in the novel, has been
identified by many as the professional
side of Mr.. Huxley himself. "The muSi-
calization of fiction" the novelist within
the novel writes. mot in the symbolist
way, by Subordinating sense to sound
But on large scale, in the construction
Mediate on Beethoven. The changes
of moods, the abrupt transitions. More
interesting STILL the modulations, moi
merely from one key to another, but
from mood to mood A theme is stated
then developed. pushed out of shape
imperceptibly deformed, until, though
still recognizably the same, it has be-
come quite different. In sets of Varla-
tions the process is carried a ster
further. Those incredible Diabelli varia-
tions, for example. The whole range OF
thought and feeling, yet all in organic
relation to ridiculous little waltz tune
Get this into a novel. How? The
abrupt transitions are easy enough. AL
you need is a sufficiency of characters
and parallel, contrapuntal plots. While
Jones is numbering a wife. Smith Is
wheeling the perambulator in the park
You alternate the themes. More in
teresting, the modulations and variations
are also more difficult. A novelist modu-
lates by reduplicatiilg situations and
characters. He shows several people
falling in love, or dying, or praying in
different ways-dissimilar solving the
same problem. Or, vice versa, similar
people confronted with dissimilar
problems.
"The writer of history or biography
has no more business with prejudice
or fixed idea than the chemist, the biolo-
gist, or the astronomer" maintained
Albert Beveridge, author of Abraham
Lincoln: 1809-1858" "The scientist
may have a theory and will labor to
prove it; but he drops it without regret,
even with thankfulness, If his researches
show that he is wrong. Those who
write history or biography with the de-
termined purpose of proving something
about an outstanding character, event,
or period, are propagandists OF cause,
promoters of a legend. nurses of a
myth" 1t was Beveridge's policy to let
facts speak for themselves.
X X X X
It has been the fate of poor James
Boswell to be known to the world only
as the satellite of DR.. Johnson and re-
corder of that great mans brilliant con-
versation. Yet Boswell wrote things not
without merit on his own account
Some of his essays, originally contrib
uted anonymously to the London Maga-
zine, as "Hypochondriack Papers" have
been reprinted in two volumes, by Mar
gerry Bailey Phi. D., of Stanford Univer-
sity, under the title The Hypochon-
driack: being the 10 essays by the
celebrated biographer, James Boswell,
in the London Magazine from
November, 1777. to August, 1888, and
here firsta reprinted" In these essays
Boswell assumes that hypochondria is
~. al, aiIY11a11t and cacY1ar