DOI article:
Hamerton, Philip Gilbert: The Yellow Book: a criticism of volume I
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21215#0186
l82
The Yellow Book
a laconic and suggestive fashion. Mr. Davidson has a good
right to maledict "Elkin Mathews & John Lane" for having
revived the detestable old custom of printing catchwords at the
lower corner of the page. The reader has just received the füll
impression of the London scene, when he is disturbed by the
isolated word Foxes, which destroys the impression and puzzles
him. London streets are not, surely, very favourable to foxes !
He then turns the page and finds that the word is the first in the
rural poem which follows. How Tennyson would have growled
if the printer had put the name of some intrusive beast at the foot
of one of his poems ! Even in prose the custom is still intoler-
able ; it makes one read the word twice over as thus (pp. 15g, 60),
"Why doesn't the wretched publisher publisher bring it out!"
We find some further poetry in Mr. Richard Garnett's transla-
tions from Luigi Tansillo. Not having access just now to the
original Italian, I cannot answer for their fidelity, but they are
worth reading, even in English, and soundly versified.
It is high time to speak of the prose. The essays are"A Defence
of Cosmetics," by Mr. Max Beerbohm, and " Reticence in Litera-
ture," by Mr. Arthur Waugh. I notice that a critic in the New
York Nation says that the Whistlerian affectations of Mr. Beerbohm
are particularly intolerable. I understood his essay to be merely a
jeu d'esprit, and found that it amused me, though the tastes and
opinions ingeniously expressed in it are precisely the opposite of
my own. Mr. Beerbohm is (or pretends to be) entirely on the
side of artifice against nature. The difficulty is to determine
what is nature. The easiest and most " natural " manners of a
perfect English lady are the result of art, and of a more advanced
art than that indicated by more ceremonious manners. Mr. Beer-
bohm says that women in the time of Dickens appear to have
been utterly natural in their conduct, "flighty, gushing, blushing,
fainting,
The Yellow Book
a laconic and suggestive fashion. Mr. Davidson has a good
right to maledict "Elkin Mathews & John Lane" for having
revived the detestable old custom of printing catchwords at the
lower corner of the page. The reader has just received the füll
impression of the London scene, when he is disturbed by the
isolated word Foxes, which destroys the impression and puzzles
him. London streets are not, surely, very favourable to foxes !
He then turns the page and finds that the word is the first in the
rural poem which follows. How Tennyson would have growled
if the printer had put the name of some intrusive beast at the foot
of one of his poems ! Even in prose the custom is still intoler-
able ; it makes one read the word twice over as thus (pp. 15g, 60),
"Why doesn't the wretched publisher publisher bring it out!"
We find some further poetry in Mr. Richard Garnett's transla-
tions from Luigi Tansillo. Not having access just now to the
original Italian, I cannot answer for their fidelity, but they are
worth reading, even in English, and soundly versified.
It is high time to speak of the prose. The essays are"A Defence
of Cosmetics," by Mr. Max Beerbohm, and " Reticence in Litera-
ture," by Mr. Arthur Waugh. I notice that a critic in the New
York Nation says that the Whistlerian affectations of Mr. Beerbohm
are particularly intolerable. I understood his essay to be merely a
jeu d'esprit, and found that it amused me, though the tastes and
opinions ingeniously expressed in it are precisely the opposite of
my own. Mr. Beerbohm is (or pretends to be) entirely on the
side of artifice against nature. The difficulty is to determine
what is nature. The easiest and most " natural " manners of a
perfect English lady are the result of art, and of a more advanced
art than that indicated by more ceremonious manners. Mr. Beer-
bohm says that women in the time of Dickens appear to have
been utterly natural in their conduct, "flighty, gushing, blushing,
fainting,