THE NEW AGE

11 July 1908

After the first page or so of “A Green Garland,” Verlaine’s lines come into one’s mind:—

De la musique avant toute chose

Et pour cela préfère l’impair.

Mr. Neuburg’s [Victor B. Neuburg] gods are Youth, Truth, Progress, Love, and “Mighty Reason”; but he says that all the gods are dead.

Prends l’éloquence et tords-lui le cou.

And we have here the diverting spectacle of a disciple of Nietzsche eloquently celebrating a Freethought Congress, glorifying Truth and Progress, and burning with indignation at the suggestion that a memorial tablet to Herbert Spencer,

The vast colossus of the later days

And silver statue in the realm of thought!

should be placed in Westminster Abbey, the fane of the hated and pallid-spirited Galileans. It is not to be inferred from this that “A Green Garland ” is without merit, despite the fact that a quotation from the “Daily Chronicle ” at the head of a page might deter one from reading any more in that book. Mr. Neuburg has more intellect than imagination, and the beauty of young summer, the heat of the sun, and the scent of blossoms stir him to sing rapturously, sometimes obscurely, of the Dawn and the Day, when life will not be sicklied o‘er with the pale cast of other worldliness. For the new humanity he builds the lofty rhyme ; but it is to be feared, alas ! that the new humanity will prefer more subtle rhythms and broken cadences, the song that will come and go like the wind on the leaf or the bourdon f a blond bee hovering over a bank of swaying mignonette.