The Greatest Book in the World, and Other Papers
IN one of the fourteen papers in this book Mr. Newton refers to the allegation of a resemblance between himself and Mr. Pickwick. It is not for a reviewer to discuss the personal appearance of an author whose book he has been reading. He may, however, look beneath the surface, to discover whether such a resemblance is possibly more than skin-deep.
Mr. Pickwick was emphatically a character, a personality, filled with the zest of life, a philosophic observer of the world and its ways. It is precisely because Mr. Newton is a character, with a personality expressing itself unmistakably on nearly every page he writes, that his books have won such a multitude of readers, most of whom count themselves also his friends. In this number there are those who do not like everything he does, who indeed object to his way of doing certain things —as, for example, bringing his narrative of Byron’s relations with Claire Clairmont to its climax with a jingle from Ruddigore. There are those besides who weary of his iterated thrusts at Prohibition, democracy, politicians, and Wilson, and suspect that his discussion of foreign debts reveals a shoemaker at some distance from his last. When Mr. Newton is most earnest may it not sometimes be only ‘in a Pickwickian sense '? At least his readers are at liberty so to take him.
It makes not the least difference whether Mr. Newton bears any actual resemblance, without or within, to Mr. Pickwick, It matters greatly that he is blessed, and blesses others, with a personal flavor as distinctive as the immortal Samuel’s. It is this which makes his writings so inalienably his own. To define that flavor for readers of the Atlantic would be a work of supererogation, Some of the type-pages of his new book were read first as pages of this magazine. These, and all the other pages of type, are now bountifully supplemented with illustrations drawn from the treasures of Mr. Newton’s library. He fairly glows as he refers to the title-page or autograph that lies before him as he writes, and his enthusiasm ‘takes’ by first intention. The remarkable physical beauty of the volume promotes this happy contagion.
What the new book reveals with special felicity is that Mr. Newton has carried his amenities of book-collecting into the fields of the Bible and of the fantastic Shelley-Godwin circle. The resulting papers, ‘The Greatest Book in the World’ and ‘Skinner Street News,’ are as good as anything he has ever done — and that is saying much. They are packed with information, not too familiar, and conveyed in the high spirits of true enjoyment. London old and recent, the Philadelphia neighborhood, Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, Sterne, the music-halls, coloredplate and sporting books, Dickens, and other enthusiasms provide him with further topics, which he treats with characteristic zest.
A modest note on a preliminary page declares: ‘The blunders in this book — and already I know of one nice one — are exclusively my own.’ Mr. Newton will be generous indeed if he does not blame upon the printers ‘The lonely [for lowly] air of Seven Dials.’ But in the ‘Torpedo and the Whale’ song of the eighties has not his own memory slipped in giving ‘The ladies loved him so!’ for ‘The whale he did not know!’ as the final line of the second stanza? Is this the ‘nice one’ — and how important!—of which he knows already? M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE
Mr. Pickwick was emphatically a character, a personality, filled with the zest of life, a philosophic observer of the world and its ways. It is precisely because Mr. Newton is a character, with a personality expressing itself unmistakably on nearly every page he writes, that his books have won such a multitude of readers, most of whom count themselves also his friends. In this number there are those who do not like everything he does, who indeed object to his way of doing certain things —as, for example, bringing his narrative of Byron’s relations with Claire Clairmont to its climax with a jingle from Ruddigore. There are those besides who weary of his iterated thrusts at Prohibition, democracy, politicians, and Wilson, and suspect that his discussion of foreign debts reveals a shoemaker at some distance from his last. When Mr. Newton is most earnest may it not sometimes be only ‘in a Pickwickian sense '? At least his readers are at liberty so to take him.
It makes not the least difference whether Mr. Newton bears any actual resemblance, without or within, to Mr. Pickwick, It matters greatly that he is blessed, and blesses others, with a personal flavor as distinctive as the immortal Samuel’s. It is this which makes his writings so inalienably his own. To define that flavor for readers of the Atlantic would be a work of supererogation, Some of the type-pages of his new book were read first as pages of this magazine. These, and all the other pages of type, are now bountifully supplemented with illustrations drawn from the treasures of Mr. Newton’s library. He fairly glows as he refers to the title-page or autograph that lies before him as he writes, and his enthusiasm ‘takes’ by first intention. The remarkable physical beauty of the volume promotes this happy contagion.
What the new book reveals with special felicity is that Mr. Newton has carried his amenities of book-collecting into the fields of the Bible and of the fantastic Shelley-Godwin circle. The resulting papers, ‘The Greatest Book in the World’ and ‘Skinner Street News,’ are as good as anything he has ever done — and that is saying much. They are packed with information, not too familiar, and conveyed in the high spirits of true enjoyment. London old and recent, the Philadelphia neighborhood, Shakespeare, Gilbert and Sullivan, Sterne, the music-halls, coloredplate and sporting books, Dickens, and other enthusiasms provide him with further topics, which he treats with characteristic zest.
A modest note on a preliminary page declares: ‘The blunders in this book — and already I know of one nice one — are exclusively my own.’ Mr. Newton will be generous indeed if he does not blame upon the printers ‘The lonely [for lowly] air of Seven Dials.’ But in the ‘Torpedo and the Whale’ song of the eighties has not his own memory slipped in giving ‘The ladies loved him so!’ for ‘The whale he did not know!’ as the final line of the second stanza? Is this the ‘nice one’ — and how important!—of which he knows already? M. A. DEWOLFE HOWE