BOOKS.
SHREWSBURY FABLES.*
Tins slim volume contains the " informal addresses" given at Evening Service in Shrewsbury School Chapel during the last four or five years on Confirmation Sunday and at the end of the Summer Term. These facts, as Mr. Alington observes in his Preface, explain the sameness of the themes, but, in view of the freshness and unconventionality of their treatment, the charge of monotony is the last that is likely to be brought against them. Russel, the famous editor of the Scotsman, did not hesitate to cast a leading article in the form of a dialogue, and Mr. Alington, as might be expected from his book, A Schoolmaster's Apology, is equally unfettered by rules and traditions in his elastic handling of the sermon form. Texts, " firstly," " secondly," and " thirdly," have all disappeared, and we have, in place of the usual formal discourse, dreams, fables, allegories, and dialogues. There are not a few passages which in their delivery must have provoked smiles, for Mr. Alington is not afraid of humour, even of a freakish kind ; but, as a sot-off, there is a great deal that is profoundly serious and touching. We are reminded at times of Bunyan and again of Plato, but the touch and the illustrations are essentially modern and admirably suited to the boy audience. The school Chapel is perhaps a Head-Master's greatest opportunity of influence, and Mr. Alington has rendered a real service to his profe:sion by indicating the lines on which the appeal of the weekly sermon can be made more helpful and stimulating without lapsinginto sensational- ism or extravagance. This is not to say that his methods call for wholesale or uncritical imitation. The engaging blend of fancy, humour, poetry, and fervour which he has at his command is given to few. But at least he has shown how advisable it is on occasion to dispense with precept and rhetoric, and to freshen the tone of pulpit utterance by resort to the form of imaginary narrative or dialogue. There are few. people who can resist the spell of a story, whether told directly or. obliquely, and Mr. Alington has given half-a-dozen different specimens • Shrewsbury Fables : being Addresses given in Shrewsbury School Chapel. By Cyril Alington, Read-Master of Eton College, Sometime Bead-Master of Shrewsbury fink ol, 1.9ucica ; Rivngeusys sad C9. VIA net.)
of the transference of various literary formulae to the needs of the school preacher.
Three of these addresses were printed in his previous volume, but the new " Fables " are of a higher quality. In " A Dream " we have a delightful fantasy on school memories in the form of a conversation with the inventor of a machine which called up the lost voiccs of the past or furnished individual leaving records. He had also a machine for looking into the future, but when it came to the point of witnessing
a Call-Over ten years on—well, the prospect was too much for the dreamer :— " ' Are they ready for me to come out now ? " Nearly ready,' said he, but there is just. one question before you go—What are you going to do about those who are absent ? " Absent ' said I. Yes, absent,' said he : you can't quite expect them all to be there after ten years, can you ? ' And then he looked at me, and I looked at him, and we neither of us spoke for a minute, though the bell went on ringing. Perhaps it would be safer to stick to the past after all,' I said. And he nodded his head. Yes, you are all like that when it comes to the point,' he said : ' let's come along to the studies.' And the bell stopped ringing and the footsteps died away, and we went along to the studies, and as he went he was repeating to himself a line or two from something we have been reading in School this term : I will deprive men of the foreknowledge of death which they possess at present. This power Prometheus has received my orders to take from them.' When we got to the studies he went to the lockers of the people who were leaving and began fixing his little machines to their books and photographs and papers, and he kept up a conversation with me all the time. ' Of course, a very simple machine does for the ordinary people,' he said : it only just repeats " Floreat Salopia " and " Play up, School " and possibly a line or two of the Carmen. Very simple, but I have known it prove quite useful in difficulties. Here's something a little bit more personal.' And he put it to my ear and I heard a lot of shouting and splashing and screaming and voices crying, Well rowed, Headroom ' (for, you see, it was in my own House). There is not much variety about the athletic records,' ho went on : sometimes it's clapping and sometimes it's cheering, and, of course, the names alter, but that's all. The Chapel records are rather more complicated ; perhaps you'd like to hear one of them.' And he gave me a Prayer Book with which he had been busying himself. At first I could hear nothing at all except a noise of feet going up the aisle, and some indistinct sounds from the organ. And then there came a line or two of a hymn, I think it was Hills of the North,' or perhaps Onward, Christian Soldiers.' And then there came two or three sentences repeated over and over again with rather startling clearness : Ordained and commanded that one man should be helpful unto another, helpful unto another, helpful unto another ; " your adversary the devil, like a roaring lion ; " made strong by faith in Thee, strong by faith in Thee.' Well, I never should have thought he would have remembered those things,' I said, for of course I knew the boy whose Prayer Book I had been holding. I wonder if he really will remember them for long.' Oh yes,' he said, it takes a long time to wear out these machines, but you'd be surprised what a funny mixture the records are. A text or two of a sermon, a line or two of a hymn, and very often the very last you would expect.' But I suppose they choose what they like,' said I. Choose what they like ? ' said he : do you really think so ? Well, try this.' And he handed me a photograph, and as I listened I heard a conversation about three years old, and it wasn't a conversation which I should like to repeat or you would care to hear. Do you think he wants to remember that 7' he said. Of course he doesn't, but he will ; he can fight it, but he can't forget, until the machine is worn out ; and they last a long time, these machines of mine.' But I sat with the photograph in my hand, thinking what he would give to forget it, for I knew he had tried already and was trying still, and I suppose I can't have looked very happy, for he said, Here's something you'll like better : this is our combined record, and they all of them take this away.' And I listened to what he gave me, and it was a funny mixture of a lot of sounds. There was the noise of the mowing-machine going in the summer, and the tap of the ball against the bat at the nets, and the trees waving about in the wind, and the rooks shouting on the top of them, and the sound of a Choir Practice coming from Chapel, and a few barking dogs here and there ; and then there came the noise of the School bell and some feet hurrying down Central, and the bell seemed to get louder and louder and the feet to get faster and faster, and then the Clock struck, and with the noise of the old Clock still ringing in my ears I awoke."
" The Recruiting Office " is a fine allegory of the spirit which animates the Blessed Company of All Faithful People, not soldiers alone, though they seem " to have the best of both worlds," but all who have sworn to belong to it and tried to be worthy of it ; while in the poem at the close of "The Elm and the River " the magic of the genius loci in relation to the school is better brought out than in anything we have read since Mr. Nevinson's chapter on the Severn and Shrewsbury in his Between the Acht
" From mountains famed in story And upland vales I flow, And gather grace and glory With every league I go, But I, who flow for ever, Am still the same great river.
Through gloomy days and merry, Through hours of sun and rain, By bridge and ford and ferry I pass, yet still remain : Though all may change, the river Flows on, the same for ever.
And you whose days are done here, Take heart of grace and say, ' Things faithfully begun hero Pass not with us away ; Then make an end of grieving There's no such thing as leaving ! And as my sons and daughters, In mist and cloud and rain, From ocean's mighty waters Return to me again, The dead you mourn for go not, But live in ways you know not.
Though here their days be over, From worlds beyond our ken Their homing spirits hover Round Shrewsbury again, Brave spirits, unregretful, Remembered, nor forgetful.
All who for Right have striven And all who died to save Have found the gift they'd given
And saved the life they gave : Then make an end of Moiling, For such there is no dying ! "
Mr. Alington's gift of characterization in verse, recently noticed by us in the Memoir of Charles Lister, is shown in other poems, and the appen- dix contains some welcome additions to tho stock of good modern hymns, of which the best is " Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O Zion," written in collaboration with the Rev. Ronald Knox. But all are free from sentimental religiosity—the bane of most hymnologists. Returning to the " Fables," we must not fail to mention the ingenious conversation in which the conflicting claims of science, military training, the humanities, art, and religion are set forth and harmonized in a dialogue between the various buildings devoted to these studies. There is something very pleasing in the way in which the Chapel sums up the discussion, in answer to the appeal of the Moser Buildings :- " There's only one thing you've left out, but it's a biggish omission —and that's the Devil. No, don't say, " Hang theology," ' it added to the Darwin Buildings, which blushed scarlet : ' I only mean that when you said last week that there was lots of fighting to be done in peace, it was what I call the Devil that has to be fought. The Devil's the Father of Lies, just as much as he's the father of Selfishness, and the father of Ugliness ; and you three are all fighting him in your different ways. He hates good soldiers, and he hates good artists, and I haven't the least doubt that he simply loathes good men of science.' " But perhaps Mr. Alington's curious knack of conveying sound and inspiring doctrine in a fantastic guise is best shown in the fable of "Tito Chapel Bazaar," a really illuminating parable of school ideals and aspira- tions, culminating in the moral that "you must give everything that you have got for the things that really matter, and then you will find in the end that they are given away after all."
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