Amongst pilgrims newly come the

raiment of one insane,

And go down to water-pools along

with some fine fellows From Yemen, who never cared to dig for themselves a well?

A KREISLER QUARTET FOR STRINGS

THE London String Quartette, which played in the United States during most of the past winter, is again touring at home. On May 9, at ■ Aeolian Hall, these competent musicians played for the first time a quartette by Fritz Kreisler. Although very little is known with regard to this

work, Mr. Kreisler's eminence as a ■violinist is itself sufficient to make the production of any of his music a matter of interest. Its performance in London is peculiarly fitting, since it was there that Mr. Kreisler gained much of his early musical reputation.

MR. SQUIRE'S PARODIES*

MR..SQUIRE has collected all his various parodies into one volume with delightful effect. Here are, besides the recently re-published Tricks of the Trade, his Imaginary Speeches and Steps to Parnassus.

This column is not the piace to discuss the prose part of the book, though the imaginary reviews of the works of various poets contain some shrewd hits. Mr. Squire's perception of the fine shade of poetic inanity is astonishing. We have "The Hell-for-Leather Ballad':

"Tis a mile and a mile as a man may march With Hope and his sins for load Or ever he win from the Marble Arch

To the end of the Tottenham Road!

and "The Exquisite Sonnet,' where "Time's acolyte' forlornly frustrates the sunset.

Collected Parodies. By J. C. Squire. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 78. 6d. net.

No purple mars the chalice; not a bird Shrills o'er the solemn silence of thy fame. There is another poem whose title is perhaps the best part:

The Contempt for Civilization and Geography Fraternal with the Elements

Plein Air Piece

For the deeps are calling, calling,
And the clouds sail slow,

And the wild in my breast has wakened
And I rise and go.

He has also hit off with great success "The Newspaper Pastoral':

The summer is a-coming and the bumble bee's a-humming,

(An' it's O to be with you, dear, by the shining Devon sea!)

And the finches in the coppice know the golden whin's a-blooming.

(An' it's O to be in Devon when the bloom is on the bee!)

We wish that a course of good parody were compulsory for aspirant poets. As we have said before, parody has the advantage over criticism that all art has over didactics. By reading parodies or witnessing Macbeth a dissatisfaction either with murders or

cliches, as the case may be, is made to spring within the breast of the wouldbe poet or murderer. The preacher and the reviewer apply pressure from without and are generally met by an exactly equivalent internal resistance.

DON JUAN ON THE STAGE.

THE Vogue of Don Juan grows daily in Paris. He struts, or has strutted, or will strut, on every stage. At the Maison de L'Oeuvre Mr. Lugne-Poe has just given us a Don Juan play, by Henry de Regnier, under the title of Les Scrupules de Sganarelle. At the Theatre de Paris L'Homme la Rose, by Henry Bataille, has enjoyed a remarkable success. The theme of the play is the experience of a middle-aged Don Juan who survives his reputation, and after witnessing his own funeral finds himself shorn of his glamour, not at all a lady-killer. Then there has just been published posthumously the work of Edmond Rostand, La Derniere Nuit de Don Juan, in which the

Love and Life and from 'the great
books of the dead'.

They taught me what they could,
I learned the little I may.
Perhaps a child may take me
Out of a shelf some day.

That contrasts sharply with

Not marble nor the gilded monuments Of princes shall outlive this powerful rime though of course the Elizabethan poet had rather brighter prospects for immortality than Mr. Roberts is likely to claim.

Not the least of his Elizabethan qualities is Mr. Roberts's willingness to go and take what he thinks he may require a practice which may have originated with Homer, but which cer@tainly did not die with him. Mr. Roberts has a truly Elizabethan lack of shame about it. In fact he rather plumes himself upon his borrowings,

To build a great cathedral Is more than honesty. Forewarned by Mr. Roberts himself, we know he steals; he knows we know. We shall not tell, nor make a fuss-especially not when his selfconfessed pilferings result in simple and sincere lyrics like this:

I loved a friend

And she loved me With all her heart's Sincerity.

I gave to her

All that I could

She gave me moreShe understood.

LITTLE KNOWN SAVAGES IN SUMATRA

THE Kubus, a race still utterly savage, who inhabit the vast virgin forests of Southern Sumatra have been investigated by Professor Wilhelm Volz, the geographer of Breslau. Professor Volz found these people struggling so hard for life in the forests that they grow old at twenty and seldom reach the age of thirty.

The Kubus are cut off from the outside world by the mountains along the west coast of Sumatra and vast swamps along the east coast. Between these almost impenetrable barriers they live a nomadic life, settling only near the rivers, in small, scattered groups. They neither hunt or fish, possess no arms, and few implements, living much as tree-dwelling anthropoid apes must have lived, except that they have learned to drive short pieces of wood into tree trunks to serve as steps.

The Kubus seem to be almost alone among primitive people in possessing no burial customs. When one of their number dies, they leave the body where it lies, and go their way without ceremony. They possess a language with very simple vocabulary, since their ideas do not go beyond the needs of everyday life, and Professor Volz was unable to discover any religious ideas.

A PLAYWRIGHT'S FLATTERY

As M. Romain Coolus, a French playwright well known as the author of Les Amants de Sazy and Antoinette Sabrier, was about to sign his name on the register of a Riviera hotel, he was brusquely pushed aside by a heavily built man, overdressed, and evidently a nouveau riche. The newcomer pompously signed his name, 'M Joseph and his valet,' and strolled away without deigning further to notice the existence of the dramatist, who had been quietly enjoying his own predicament. But when M. Coolus observed the new signature, he took a wicked revenge. Seizing the pen which the intruder had let fall, he inscribed immediately beneath his name: 'M. Romain Coolus-and his valise.'

THE CAPTIVE GOD

BY HARENDRANATH CHATTOPADHYAY

GOD is as much a prisoner, dear friend,

as you or I;

His potency is limited, and narrow is His being

And while we struggle on the earth,

He weepeth in the sky,

Held in innumerable bonds for an eternal freeing.

God is a mighty captive in the sky's enamelled tower

Vast ages greyly wander and in pity pass Him by.

He dare not even save the fragile murder of a flower,

Nor hush the arrow-wounded bird's heart-agonizing cry.

[To-Day] ECHO

BY N. C. HERMON-HODGE

WHERE the Weeping Beech stands, in the glade of Pan,

Laughing in the twilight, Echo laid a

snare

Stretch'd a cunning hidden net of

woven spider-hair,

Slender, oh, but cunning! for the

stumbling foot of Man,

Then spread his careless wings. . . . Hark! how sweet the white-throat sings.

O little, tender, scented dreams of half-forgotten things!

Whoso treads the Wood way, by the tree of tears,

Heed! let him heed how he goes; lest

evermore

Lamenting in his ear, adown the gold

en days of yore

Shall drift a little echo of the bygone years

That the wood-wind brings. . . . Hush. How sweet the white-throat sings

WIND along the cornfields,
Wind across the grass;
My love is like a clinging vine
That will not let you pass;
For should it let you pass, Love,
The heart of me would be
Just wind across the grass, Love,
Afar from thee.

Wind along the seashore,

Wind across the spray;

My love is like the great white ships Το carry you away;

To carry you away, Love,

For should it let you be, My heart would break like spray, Love, Afar from thee.

[The Outlook] FOREBODING

BY EDGELL RICKWORD

SOMETIMES through deep pools on the hills of Sleep

That mirror gloomy forests of the skies,

I watch the grey clouds of the daytime sweep

In silence sadder than the sombre cries

Of men imprisoned in old caves, who weep.

Sometimes a mist of music falls in shower

And all those dim weeds are as tem

Then the pale face of Death's impatient hour

Breaks through the rain-torn leaves, a sudden Moon Crinkling the water like flower.

a silver

ENGLAND REVIEWS LANSING'S BOOK

THE English reviews of Mr. Lansing's The Peace Negotiations for the most part summarize the contents with a modicum of approving comment. The Outlook observes that 'without Wilson to mislead and befool liberal opinion everywhere until it was too late to act, the Versailles Treaty would never have been accepted by England,' and regards Mr. Lansing's contribution to history as 'the most important though not the most sensational' yet made to the story of the Peace Conference. The Spectator considers the book notable for two things: its picture of President Wilson, 'of the most amazing kind,' and the dire consequences when the 'interests of a great nation, nay of all nations, are reposed in the hands of a man who has the temperament not of a statesman, but of a highly strung man of letters, possessed of the academic type of mind

a man who does not know how to act with or even to confer with others; who resents advice unless it is sympathetic or even adulatory; who regards opposition not merely as an insult, but as a personal wound.' It compares Wilson with George Meredith's egoist, Sir Willoughby Patterne. John Murray, who reviews the book in the Sunday Times, thinks that it proves that though Mr. Copyright 1921, by

Wilson may have been an idealist 'he was at best a most inconsistent.idealist. Obsessed throughout by the notion that he was the predestined mediator and peacemaker of the world, Mr. Wilson was never able to descend from the clouds.' Another review, in the Times Literary Supplement, says that the book, 'which is a remarkable revelation of character, shows him (Mr. Lansing), with all the qualities of a lawyer. As a critic he would have been invaluable; and nothing can demonstrate better the intellectual, and, let us confess, the moral weaknesses of the President, than that he did not welcome the opportunity of submitting his projects to a man from whom he would have gained the invaluable profit of the most candid and relentless criticism. But granting this, we can but feel that Mr. Lansing must in any circumstances have been a difficult colleague. His strength lay clearly in criticism more than in political suggestion.' This reviewer further observes that the European powers were naturally influenced by sordid, selfish and material interests. terial interests. . . . The case against Mr. Wilson, and it is one which Mr. Lansing puts with unanswerable force, is that being in a position of peculiar advantage, in that in fact America had few interests in the peace settlement, he entirely failed to use his position, as he The Living Age Co.