Volume 1 — CORRESPONDENCE

AMERICAN COPYRIGHT

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—I trust you will find room to insert this letter after the space you have given to Mr. G. H. Putnam. We are all grateful for the work that Mr. Putnam has done, but—to use an American phrase, which no doubt he will appreciate—"there are others" who have worked equally hard, and not infrequently with a more satisfactory result. We must thank you, therefore, for your brief Editorial Note in the March issue.

The real reason, however, for this letter is to correct some of the statements made by Mr. Putnam. He glorifies the new American Act because of its liberal allowance of 120 days' "interim" copyright. He has understated his own case. The Act gives sixty days from the publication abroad in which to deposit a copy at Washington, and four months from the date of deposit in which to take up the copyright, subject to the numerous harassing technicalities of the Act. An author, therefore, has 180 instead of 120 days.

In Mr. Putnam's second statement he tries to score a point against Great Britain. As in the former paragraph he understated his case, in this he would overstate it.

He complains that American authors have to make a bona-fide publication in Great Britain within fourteen days of the publication in the United States. He italicises bona fide. He must have overlooked the fact that publication is an essential part of copyright in the States just as much as it is in Great Britain. This item then can be ruled out.

He contrasts, however, the meagre allowance of fourteen days under the British Act against the liberal allowance of 180 (not 120) days under the American Act. It must be pointed out with due emphasis that when the author is not hampered by typesetting clauses, printed copyright notices, and filing difficulties, time in the matter of publication is really of little account. The American publisher has merely to ship off a consignment before he publishes the book in the States and to await instructions from the London house that the consignment has arrived. There is no difficulty in this step. So long as the technicalities of United States Act still stand we are sick of these counter-irritants, which, now the war is over, "cut no ice."

We have heard that the Typesetters' Union—of which Mr. Putnam seems unduly alarmed—could be made to understand from statistics supplied that they are standing in their own light. But, perhaps, if they are still obdurate on the practical side, they might be influenced by the argument of the idealist "that it is a disgrace to a civilised nation to stand outside the intellectual Union of other civilised Nations." The Americans have had the opportunity of joining the revised Convention of Berne for many years, but have neglected to do so.

It is not astonishing, therefore, that President Wilson cannot influence them to follow him into the League of Nations under the Peace Treaty.

For the last paragraph of Mr. Putnam's letter—his ἀπολογία {apologia} for American authors and publishers—all authors in Great Britain are grateful. If British authors have not followed with appreciation the efforts of their brothers in the States, they should have done so. We gladly now pay tribute to the work of those who so long and earnestly, yet unsuccessfully, have struggled to bring the United States to join the ranks of other civilised nations.—Yours, etc.,

G. Herbert Thring.

March 11th.

[Perhaps Major Putnam will reply.—Editor.]

FLAUBERT AND MR. STURGE MOORE

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—Mr. H. W. Crundell thinks that I should explain the absence of a note to my poem Micah; the presence of the one he suggests would have appeared to me an impertinence. Did Gray and Arnold call attention by notes when they adapted a few lines from Pindar? Did Tennyson thus docket what he owed to Homer and Virgil? To me the explanation seems rather due from Mr. Crundell: why he wrote his letter, and from you, why you printed it. However, obviously you think differently, so this occasion may as well serve me to allay an innocent curiosity that I neither intended to provoke nor to baffle. Besides Mr. Crundell's find there is a longer passage from Salammbo in my Mariamne. I put a line from Goldsmith's She Stoops to Conquer into my Rout of the Amazons, a phrase from Myers' translation of Pindar into At Bethel, and a phrase from Milton into Love's First Communion. Excepting the usual array from the Bible, I believe these to be all my verbal and literal appropriations.—Yours, etc.,

T. Sturge Moore.

P.S.—I have forgotten an unintentional one, a line from Keats in Mariamne.

[By printing Mr. Crundell's letter we didn't mean to suggest that we agreed with his argument; we were merely interested in the derivation of a beautiful passage in a beautiful poem.—Editor.]

"MANSOUL"

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—Your review of Mr. Doughty's Mansoul reveals an attitude somewhat similar to that of Jeffrey towards Wordsworth. May a humble reader hesitatingly retort the phrase—This will never do? Your reviewer does not think Mr. Doughty should be ignored, but he finds Chaucer easier and more modern, and considers this poetry at best a thing of tough shreds and purple patches.

With this opinion I do not contend, for I do not clearly understand upon what principle of criticism your reviewer is acting; but I should like to suggest that his opinion springs from a misconception which ought not to be nourished by the London Mercury. He seems to think that Mr. Doughty's "guttural obscurity of speech," his style in general, is a vital fault. I submit that he assumes rather than proves such a degree of obscurity, and that he puts an excessive value upon the merely formal and conventional graces of English blank verse. He does not recognise that Mr. Doughty is making not only his own poem, but his own style, and that the poetry is to be judged not exclusively by its conformity with traditional verse—the false standard of the eighteenth century—but by the success with which its style empowers and lucidly presents the author's conception. Casual wrynesses, unaccustomed inversions, idiosyncratic punctuation (forgive, dear Cobbett, the long words) do not affect this central question. Your reviewer admits the greatness of the poet's conception, admits that it has the substantial elements of noble poetry—I mean such elements as we find in Paradise Lost and The Dynasts—but is unwilling to admit that his form is his natural form, the form that expresses not only his explicit intention but his implicit character, and, therefore, a good form. I submit that Mr. Doughty's style in poetry is the inevitable expression of his mind at work upon imaginative themes. I submit that a true poet does not and cannot choose his style, and that the test of his style is not its degree of conformity with Chaucer's simplicity, Milton's lofty sweetness, Tennyson's effusive delicacy, but the fullness with which it expresses his own imaginative vision. Mr. Doughty has written, not a few miscellaneous lyrics, but a vast body of poetry in which a perfectly clear apprehension of past and future is presented. His themes are unfolded with such fullness as enables us to judge whether the expression of them, unusual as it may seem, ruins them or preserves them unspoiled, sustains or dulls their brightness. With extreme diffidence I suggest that your reviewer has not addressed himself to this proposition, and that this proposition remains an elementary principle of criticism. And I would remark that Mr. Doughty's own observations upon his style (note to The Dawn in Britain, Volume 6) might suitably be referred to for a precise statement of his attitude towards the English language.

The principles of criticism do not change, but may be eclipsed or clouded. They are familiar, yet need constant reassertion and illustration. Difficult as it may be to reduce these abstractions to clear and useful formulæ, I think it would be a service to letters if you, Sir, would state and clarify them afresh. Wanting definition and illustration, creation and criticism may become discordant, with unhappy results for each. It is my suspicion of a faint discord that must form the apology for the length of this letter.—Yours, etc.,

S. E.

[We did not dispute that Mr. Doughty's style is natural to him. We merely said that that is his and our misfortune.—Editor.]

JOHN DONNE

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—After reading the most interesting paper on John Donne in the last number of The London Mercury, I wonder whether Browning had not him in mind when he wrote The Grammarian's Funeral. "An hydroptic immoderate desire of human learning and languages" consumed the "soul by-droptic" grammarian no less than Donne; like Donne even to the crumbs he'd "fain eat up the feast, Aye, nor feel quaesy." He knew nothing, it is true, of "the quaesy pain Of being beloved and loving"; his was a passion of mind only, though, like Donne, he knew the sickness of the body overwrought. The analogy could be traced further.

For more reasons than the tracing of remembrance of Donne in one poem it would be interesting to know how "longe" Browning "hadde ygo" to the earlier poet.—Yours, etc.,

J. R. Rackham.

Queen Mary High School for Girls, Anfield Road, Liverpool, February 13th.

A POINT IN SHERIDAN

(To the Editor of The London Mercury)

Sir,—In one of the scenes of Sheridan's School for Scandal occurs the following passage: "You may see her on a little squat pony with her hair plaited up behind like a drummer's...." (Act 2, sc. 2.)

I presume that the underlined words, which have often puzzled me, are an allusion to the manners of the time, with which I am insufficiently acquainted. As none of the editions I have been able to consult give any explanation on the point, perhaps one of your readers would oblige me by throwing some light on the matter.—Yours, etc.,

F. Pellisier.

Remiremont, Vosges, February 16th.