formed, the game would receive adaptable hints from all quarters, loft from the lofted end of the pall mall mallet, spoons from the lève of

The Saturday Review.

that game, Holland.

and special balls from But the genesis, as well as the genius of it, was essentially Scots.

Since I am about to write upon Daydreams, let me begin by indulging in one: I am ordained, and about to preach my first sermon. Of course it is most important that I should prove myself to my new flock a physician of souls and no ordinary one. As I shake out the folds of my surplice, all eyes are fixed upon the interesting young preacher. What is my text? I will not choose one which will offer an excuse for lashing poor humanity where the strokes of moralists have fallen so frequently that the place has become hard and cicatrized; that will not serve the purpose. No, to establish my power I must discover a disquieting intimacy with weaknesses so shamefully silly that they are rarely spoken of, even among friends. I catch beneath the brims of glamorous hats earnest glances, in which curiosity and reverence are delightfully mingled. Ah! I think you will wince first, but before I have done yonder gravid church-warden, whose mind, to judge from his deportment, never strays from the matter in hand, whether practical or holy, he, too, and others like him, shall feel my probe. My text is already given out: "Behold this dreamer cometh."

Alas, the sermon itself is too long to report in these pages. Besides, I am not in Holy Orders, only a critic who must choose his text from secular books.

As a reader of novels, I have often been struck by the fact that modern novelists, even those who set out to display the secrets of the recesses in human nature, never seem to be aware

of the extent to which men and women, sensible, matter-of-fact men and women, indulge themselves in building castles-in-the-air-castles of such absurd, fantastically improbable architecture that the Prince Regent's Pavilion at Brighton is a sensible edifice compared with these. It is the commonest form of dram-drinking. And yet,

if we were to believe these novelists, who pretend to hold up a glass to human nature, we should be persuaded that men's and women's thoughts and emotions habitually sprang from rational expectations and actual events. Nothing of the kind. The average human being's imagination is employed almost perpetually in feeding a preposterous vanity upon food which, though airy and insubstantial, has apparently a certain nourishing quality. His or her interests and rational ambitions are only attended to in the interstices of a long wool-gathering process. When anything disagreeable occurs, if the remedy does not lie to hand, they proceed to nestle down in a little warm nest of dreams. The hygienic property of work and of society lies almost entirely in their being preventatives to day-dreaming, for this habit, if it gets strong possession, reduces the mind to a condition in which anything that really happens hardly affects it; to rouse such a person is like stirring a dish of skimmed milk, you may stir and stir and stir without any result. If introspection fails to convince any reader of the truth of this charge (a wide shot which hits half the world), let him reflect upon these aditional

Choule, chole, is still applied in Belgium to a sort of jeu du mail aux grands coups. It has no other resemblance to golf. Nor, by the way, has the Dutch game, het kolven, played as a sort of croquet in the courts of inns, any resemblance to golf, and the popular notion that golf comes from kolf (a bat or butt end) and golf from het kolven is a superficial error. Under James VI. of Scotland (ascended 1567) the Scotch bought balls from Holland to play golf in Scotland. But the game was played in Scotland more than 150 years before, and was not played in Holland even when the Dutch made feather balls.

As

Of course in an earlier form, as seen in the place-name Golfdrum, it was "golf," and equally, of course, both golf and kolf derive like the German kolbe from an ancient Teutonic cholbo, and the hypothetical Gothic kulban. The ancient term means a stick with a head, a club, and "club" is probably a derivative. Mr. Lang suggests a Keltic form of this old word. Returning to soule, or chole, we may reject Ducange's derivation from solea, "because the ball was hit with the sole of the foot," which of course it was not. for its derivation from cholbo, we must remember that this meant a club, while soule generally refers to the ball. the German Kügel is ball, but the English "cudgel" is club; and chole seems to be Belgian for stick. Such confusion is natural, and may have often occurred. Thus Ducange notes that crosse sometimes meant "ball." All the same, choule might just as well derive from the Teutonic word which gave the German Kügel. In any case golf does not come from la choule, nor the word golf either.

Yet

But how do we get the Teutonic word in Scotland? In Scots dialects gowf occurs, meaning a blow with the open hand. Is the word Keltic (original Scots) or Teutonic? It is very old,

but Scotland was particularly a Northman's country from the ninth century to the thirteenth, the Lowlands were largely Danish, the North and the Western Islands Norwegian. Now the ancient Scandinavians, like many other peoples, had a ball-game played with cudgels, the knattleike, soppleike, or sköfuleike, and the cudgel was knattbrê (so Weinhold). But the Old Norse and Icelandic usual term for a cudgel was kolfr, from the old Teutonic root. The Northmen were great adapters if not creators of games. But the Scots golf is probably older than their advent, and so probably is the game. The fact that it is first mentioned in Scots documents goes far to show that it originated in Scotland, as is appropriate.

The two salient features of the game, apart from the club, are the making of the hole in as few strokes as possible, and the use of holes as marks. The latter seems to have belonged to early varieties of crosse, and the former was common in the days of pall mall. Hence we cannot, with Mr. Lang, exclude French influence on account of the hole system. But everything else points to a Scots origin of the game and a Keltic (Scots) origin of the name, unless perchance Scandinavian assisted in this.

It may well be that, as Professor Patrick Geddes fancied, it was rabbitholes (on the S. Andrews foreshore) that suggested a mark for the golfball. He imagined a shepherd tending sheep on that narrow strip of pasture; his Viking blood (Scandinavian influence again) prompted him to combine exercise with his meditative occupation. He therefore swung his shepherd's crook at the white pebbles. The rabbit-holes, at first by accident, suggested a mark. Certainly the singlehanded character of golf is an element that needs more explanation than the Continental games supply. When

formed, the game would receive adaptable hints from all quarters, loft from the lofted end of the pall mall mallet, spoons from the lève of

The Saturday Review.

that game, Holland. the genius Scots.

and special balls from But the genesis, as well as of it, was essentially

Since I am about to write upon Daydreams, let me begin by indulging in one: I am ordained, and about to preach my first sermon. Of course it is most important that I should prove myself to my new flock a physician of souls and no ordinary one. As I shake out the folds of my surplice, all eyes are fixed upon the interesting young preacher. What is my text? I will not choose one which will offer an excuse for lashing poor humanity where the strokes of moralists have fallen so frequently that the place has become hard and cicatrized; that will not serve the purpose. No, to establish my power I must disCover a disquieting intimacy with weaknesses so shamefully silly that they are rarely spoken of, even among friends. I catch beneath the brims of glamorous hats earnest glances, in which curiosity and reverence are delightfully mingled. Ah! I think you will wince first, but before I have done yonder gravid church-warden, whose mind, to judge from his deportment, never strays from the matter in hand, whether practical or holy, he, too, and others like him, shall feel my probe. My text is already given out: "Behold this dreamer cometh."

Alas, the sermon itself is too long to report in these pages. Besides, I am not in Holy Orders, only a critic who must choose his text from secular books.

As a reader of novels, I have often been struck by the fact that modern novelists, even those who set out to display the secrets of the recesses in human nature, never seem to be aware

of the extent to which men and women, sensible, matter-of-fact men and women, indulge themselves in building castles-in-the-air-castles of such absurd, fantastically improbable architecture that the Prince Regent's Pavilion at Brighton is a sensible edifice compared with these. It is the commonest form of dram-drinking. And yet,

if we were to believe these novelists, who pretend to hold up a glass to human nature, we should be persuaded that men's and women's thoughts and emotions habitually sprang from rational expectations and actual events. Nothing of the kind. The average human being's imagination is employed almost perpetually in feeding a preposterous vanity upon food which, though airy and insubstantial, has apparently a certain nourishing quality. His or her interests and rational ambitions are only attended to in the interstices of a long wool-gathering process. When anything disagreeable occurs, if the remedy does not lie to hand, they proceed to nestle down in a little warm nest of dreams. The hygienic property of work and of society lies almost entirely in their being preventatives to day-dreaming, for this habit, if it gets strong possession, reduces the mind to a condition in which anything that really happens hardly affects it; to rouse such a person is like stirring a dish of skimmed milk, you may stir and stir and stir without any result. If introspection fails to convince any reader of the truth of this charge (a wide shot which hits half the world), let him reflect upon these aditional

facts, which are symptoms of the fantastic prevalence of the castle-in-the-air habit. Think how many contented failures you have known, who yet, you are sure, have neither stoicism nor romance enough to be one of whom it could be prophesied vaccuus cantabit. What is the secret of their placid resignation? Dreaming.

One

Look at the type of literature that is really widely and profoundly popular. Are not the novels which run like a prairie fire through continents against which the cold douche of criticism is an ineffectual hose-are they not made of the same stuff as castles in the air? Are they not merely reflections of those idiotic, egotistic dreams of satisfied vanity, to which their voracious readers are ashamed to confess? reason why our fiction on the average is so bad is that writers mistake for the genuine impulse to write, the desire (coupled, of course, with the honest hope of royalties) to fondle their dreams of how splendid it would be to appear like their hero or heroine in such intensely gratifying circumstances. If by any chance you are snowed up or rained up at an inn, with a set of trashy novels as the only possible means of distraction, and you are not in a mood to let your mind flow with the author's current, some amusement may be derived from divining in his book the nature of his day-dreams. When you meet the crowd stepping The Eye-Witness.

westward along the pavements, watch the faces of the solitary people hurrying by. Do not be deceived by portentous, magisterial appearances; that wheezy old gentleman in a top-hat is really crowned with an all-England cricket-cap, and has hit to the boundary three times running in the most critical test match of the year; that most improbable person has saved the life of a famous beauty under the most heroic circumstances. Watch his lips, he is talking to her now. That young clerk (England is invaded, her fleet is sunk) has invented a marvellous subma. rine, and at the last moment, when all seemed lost, he has saved his country and blown the Germans into smithereens. He is replying now to his own toast at a great banquet in the Mansion House. That little woman with a prayer-book in her hand, hurrying demurely as the church-bell rings more quickly on the hour of the afternoon service, has reared a still more stupendous aerial edifice. It is the day of the Last Judgment, and in the sight of assembled and duly impressed mankind, she is receiving some distinguishing token of approbation. Friends who have neglected her and her landlady had better take care, her magnanimity will on that day be overwhelming. Dreams, dreams-"we are such stuff as dreams are made of." There are cures for this habit of mind, but here I will not go into them.

Desmond MacCarthy.

"A Captain Unafraid," is The Strange Adventures of Dynamite Johnny O'Brien, told in the first person by Hor. ace Smith. Whether the author translated into his own terms the story as it was told him, or whether it is in Johnny O'Brien's very words, the nar

rative has a breeziness and directness that are irresistible. Johnny O'Brien professes himself law abiding save in one respect, that of filibustering. He is a pilot by profession and a champion of the oppressed by nature. The book is an account of filibustering in South

American Revolutions and during the Spanish War, and of a plan to rescue Dreyfus from Devil's Island which was just too late to be successful, coming at the time of his actual removal and pardon. Simply as a story of adventure it is enlivening and thrilling; and the new angle presented from which one may see the Spanish War and many of the personages concerned in it, is interesting historically. Harper & Brothers.

"The Forest on the Hill," is another romance of Dartmoor by Eden Phillpotts. The law of the forest, that of the survival of the fittest and the readiness of the strong to prey upon the weak, is reflected in the lives of the human beings in the story. It tells how a thirst for more money, property and power, caused old Lot Snow to ruin his nephew's life and happiness, and incidentally to drag others to crime and despair. The descriptions of the forest are beautiful, and the character of Drusilla Whyddon, a combination of passion, strength and wisdom, is unusually appealing. While undeniably artistic, the book has a note of fatality and unrelieved depression, that makes the reader long for a final word of hope which he is denied. John Lane Company.

Fiction-readers who are content with the contemporary detective story or problem novel will very likely be appalled by the prodigious length of Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel "The Brothers Karamazov," which is presented for the first time in complete form to English-speaking readers in Mrs. Constance Garnett's excellent translation. (The Macmillan Co.) But novel readers of a more serious type, who realize the position which Dostoevsky holds among the most profound students of Russian life and character, comparable only to Turgenev and Tolstoi, will wel

come this book in the attractive setting which the publishers have given it,— all the more because it is the first volume of a new edition of the author's works. A competent critic has said of Dostoevsky that, of all the masters of fiction, in Russia or elsewhere, he is the most spiritual. Through whatever tragedies he was called upon either to experience or to witness, and they were. many, Dostoevsky never lost his faith in God. This is especially true of "Crime and Punishment," which is the novel by which he is best-known to American readers; and it is scarcely less true of the present novel, the last which he wrote and which, indeed, he left incomplete. This story of the four sons of a reckless and passionate father who well deserves the tragic end which comes to him, is painful and full of horrors; but a high moral purpose pervades it, and its portrayal of vice is never alluring, but repelling. It is the third son, Alexey, or Alyosha, the young monk, who is the commanding figure in the story, and his character is drawn with singular delicacy and beauty. The story, like most of Dostoevsky's work, is of unequal power: there are long digressions, and whole chapters might be eliminated without loss. But the author's prolixity and unevenness were the natural result of the conditions under which he worked. He was always poor, and often sick; he wrote under severe strain and with headlong haste; but he knew the human heart as few novelists have known it, and his delineations of character were unerringly true and sincere. "The Brothers Karamazov" is a really great book, which, even in these hurried days, will richly repay the reader. The impression which it leaves upon the mind is not easily effaced.

Ever since "Tom Brown," stories of boys at school have won a warm welcome. They usually appeal to three