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were really bent upon using the journal effectively as a vehicle; but as to this there may be other opinions. "The Adelphi" is to die unless its circulation is definitely guaranteed. Meanwhile, a new monthly upon somewhat similar lines to the original "Adelphi" has just been started under the title of "The Calendar of Modern Letters". This periodical, of which the first number has just reached me, is edited by a young poet and critic named Edgell Rickword, whose work has appeared in "The London Mercury"; and it contains contributions by D. H. Lawrence, who seems essential to any contemporary non-commercial venture, Siegfried Sassoon, A. E. Coppard, Robert Graves, the editor, and others. At glimpse, "The Calendar" is not overwhelmingly novel, but it has interesting items, and should be a good investment if it keeps its word as to the character of its contributions. It is very desirable indeed that there should be a monthly journal in which the work of young talents can appear. We have, indeed, "The London Mercury", but that monthly is not run especially for the young. Hence, no doubt, the occasion of the new monthly. I hope "The Calendar" will discover some noteworthy new writers. I am sorry to see in its pages the names of so many older men, or of men whose talent is fixed, although I can appreciate the reasons for their presence. What chiefly I regret is that the first number does not contain any "creative" work by a young and unestablished writer. We want this "creative" work more than any criticism. Probably Mr. Rickword will presently attract to his venture some fresh stars. If he can do this he will have performed a great service to his generation. It is the regrettable feature of so much young talent that it runs to criticism of others

sometimes to very adverse criticism without, so to speak, showing its own hand. "The Calendar" will doubtless indeed, it must shortly show its hand. I can therefore do no more at present than salute the confidence which has led to its establishment. I could wish that the format were more distinguished. The type used is not more than commonplace, and its arrangement is uninspired. The best thing about the format of the first number is the cover, which is printed in a good blue. While I am on the subject of "The Calendar" I may perhaps mention that another monthly will presently be published along lines not altogether dissimilar. I hope the two ventures will not clash. It would be a pity. I expect the other venture, a title for which has not yet been found, will run upon rather broader lines than "The Calendar". It will make its first appearance in September. I shall give fuller particulars at a later date.

I mentioned a page or so earlier that the critic's vocabulary was a little restricted. It may be retorted upon me that unless large numbers of new words are constantly added to the English language, some such repetition of well used adjectives is forced upon any rapid writer. It is certainly hard to avoid cliché, and if once one begins to look for cliché in one's own work one will soon feel despair at the stereotyped phrases to be found in every sentence. I suppose that I use as many clichés as anybody, but if I do so it is done unconsciously. The same may be said of most writers. The other day I heard three very experienced writers accusing each other sternly of the bad habit and at the same time denying the charges brought against themselves. I could not defend myself in this way, because

ore.

it is impossible to judge the quality of one's own writing. Some words have a way of getting overworked, and these words I should naturally avoid if they came into my head; but I remember making fun of a friend of mine who twice in one book used the phrase "understanded of the people". My friend asked why I objected to it. I said, "Because it's such beastly cliché." Whereupon he said, with great simplicity: "Is it? I only know of it in the Prayer Book.” This shows how one man's cliché is another man's golden The word "drastic" is one word that I should avoid. It seems to me detestable. Writers of football reports in England often use the word "convincing" in a horrible way. They say, "Bonsham gave a convincing display", or refer to "Twonjett's convincing form", and so on. Reviewers are fond of the word "stark". One sees "flesh and blood", "cover to cover", "admirable", "charming", and so on. I believe we all use the more common commendatory adjectives. In themselves they are not clichés, but they become so when they are used with any strain. This is perhaps the real sign of a cliché, that it is used slightly out of its meaning, or with exaggerated emphasis, or as an evasion. We all laugh at the clichés of the house agent - his "commodious", etc., but we hardly recognize that he is faced with the need of expressing himself through a convention. The house agent's "charming Old World cottage", "commodious mansion", "dwelling house, situate", etc., etc., are all perfectly intelligible to any person who has ever hunted a house. Business men resemble the house agent. They and he are all driven into cliché because they dare not use the common word, or dare not repeat the same word twice in a sentence. They are hampered by their

respect for the English language. There is no gusto in their style. Their vocabulary is limited: it is banal but its phrases are less clichés than conventions. Conventionality could not be brought as a charge against nurserymen. I need not refer to the Dutch bulb grower, who gets some of his effects by way of Babu English. I am thinking rather of our own, home grown nurserymen. I have now before me a catalogue, illustrated with highly colored pictures of all sorts of magnificent flowers in gardeners' language, "showy plants" and I am struck with admiration, not of the highly colored pictures, but of the highly colored language in which the plants are commended by the nurseryman himself. Here is an example:

Next to the Rose, there is nothing that can equal the Pæony for regal splendour. It is a luxurious flower, putting one in mind of quantities of velvety rose petals brought together to form a single majestic bloom. Folk who grow a few old-fashioned Pæonies huge bushes occupying several square yards of ground, which seldom produce more than two or three second or third-rate flowers have simply no idea what our Pæonies, which have been selected from the finest varieties in the world, are like. The delicious fragrance of these Pæonies, together with their splendid form and colour, make them absolutely irresistible.

I quote it to show the freedom of the author's style. I proceed:

SEDUM, "STONECROP". When God made the deserts, He made the Stonecrops. They haven't got a hump like a camel, but they are protected by Nature with the means of sustaining life on short rations of water, even during long periods of drought. They are therefore well adapted for the dry places "where nothing will grow". Have you an ugly wall, or a wall which is simply bare without being ugly, a dry bank or a ledge on the rockery which you regard as a death-trap for all plant life? Then try the Stonecrops. They will thrive and thank

you.

Here the gardener has touched a deeper note, indeed. He is subtle. He ap

peals to the ordinary man whose garden is like a brick yard. But it is when he comes to some new varieties of delphinium, which he calls "Hollyhock Larkspurs", that he rises to eloquence. If the first of the following extracts does not seem to you a piece of generous appreciation which might with profit to us all be studied by reviewers and dramatic critics, what about the second? The first is:

SEALANDIA. If flowers can be judged by the same standards as feminine beauty, it is to this exquisite representative of the Larkspur family that the prize should go. Words could never be found to faithfully portray its delicate loveliness or perfect grace of form. The broad spikes tapering towards the top are sheathed with parma violet flowers, tinted sky blue. In the centre of each petal is a small dark eye. A valuable late-flowering variety.

The second reads as follows:

WINSOME. Award of Merit, R. H. S. In an effort to describe the indescribably fine colour of this variety, the gardening press has printed the following: "A perfectly single flower of Reckitt's blue colour, relieved by small spots of heliotrope towards the tips of the petals. The spike is tall and shapely." As a matter of fact that is but the uninspired version of a tired reporter who has struggled through a stifling tent in an endeavour to describe a host of flowers seen in an artificial setting. In the garden the plant presents a different aspect. The flowers are of a vivid "live" colour which challenges comparison with anything in heaven or earth. It is a changeful colour; warm and pulsating in the full light of day; misty and dreamy in the pale of evening. Winsome is both its name and its character. If only our literary commendations were written in so free and so convinced a style, there would be no need for publishers' advertisements. Once again, reviews would really sell books, as they are supposed to have done in older days. What the nurseryman

timeless and ageless in its appeal, and informative, belonging to the social period for which the books are written.

To miss the joy of reading and rereading outstanding books of the first class in childhood means irreparable loss, for no grown up ever brings to story or poem what a child brings to his first reading. To miss books of the second class is a matter of minor importance, since their essential content is as bound to reappear at regular intervals as are the hardy annuals and perennials of a well tended New England garden.

Now that we are assured that all departments of knowledge are going to be preserved in outlines of generous proportions for the benefit of the fathers and mothers, the uncles and aunts, the teachers and lecturers who have been accustomed to buy children's

books with the idea of forestalling any possible yearning after the unknown, we may well pause at the end of the first quarter of the twentieth century to ask: How fares it now with the imagination? Who is concerned with its need? Is it being better nourished and cherished, more wisely exercised in our own time, or is it being taken for granted, or forcibly fed with theoretical and commonplace substitutes for the dreams and visions of childhood?

Clear memory of childhood is as rare as it is un-selfconscious. That it cannot be recovered by the questionnaire method has been fully demonstrated in recent novels no less than in the textbooks on child study of an earlier day. It was indeed the futility of the child study methods of the 1890's as applied to children's reading, and a keen interest in eighteenth century literature for its own sake, which drove me backward

Little Goody Two Shoes.

Frontispiece from one of the First Worcester Edition, printed by Isaiah Thomas in 1787

and forward over the history of the writing, illustrating, and publishing of children's books until it took hold on my mind as a subject of fascinating interest and limitless possibilities. I found myself continually wondering why it was not given its true place in the curriculum of the colleges and universities from which so many reviewers and publishers have been recruited.

I had, it may be noted, from the first a different type of interest than the collector brings to this subject, for I was learning about the lives the children lived in different centuries as well as about their books, learning a great many things which I have found pointedly suggestive in personal relationships with present day parents, teachers, librarians, publishers, and booksellers. Moreover, I believe it was much reading of the old children's books in contrast to the new that developed and strengthened my powers of appraisal. I keenly enjoyed both text and pictures and I discovered that certain stories had not lost their hold upon children; lively incident, dramatic climax, even when obviously employed for moral ends, clarity of meaning, and sincere interest in children may take to stilts but they never fail to reach a goal in any century.

It was reassuring to find that I had been exploring my chosen field in good company. I well remember the delight with which I welcomed E. V. Lucas's "Old Fashioned Tales" (1905) and "Forgotten Tales of Long Ago" (1906) to the story-book shelves of a children's library. Charming books they were, and still are, for the children have not allowed them to go out of print. Francis Bedford did not merely decorate them in the spirit of their time, his illustrations are a direct challenge to the children of another age to read