384
“True wit is nature to advantage dressed What oft was thought but ne'er so well
expressed."
"
23
In that couplet an idea is sensibly presented, and in a form that has high mnemonic value; but as its prosody is so simple, we p esume that it does not provoke the high- toned æsthetic ecstasy to be noted in the poetry-lovers who have been gloating over Mr. MEREDITH'S sonorous syllables. Any attempt to put his poem into straight- forward prose should show how it affects us. We understand that a hundred years have passed since October 1805, and that NELSON, whose very name once sufficed to quiet the fears and tremblings of a terror-stricken nation, is immortal in the sense that poets dream, and all noble souls wish to be immortal in just the same way. The simile of a hand hil over sea, to appease the fears at home, simply recalls childish recollections of JACK-THE-GIANT-KILLER'S victim. After careful study, which should not be necessary, we gather that NELSON'S name, thundered through the foeman's ears, defeated them before they encoun- tered the fiery blast of his guns; and this we cannot believe. It is as difficult to place "or peace in slavery in its proper place in a prose rendering; and similar diffi- culties will be experienced in transliterating the remaining stanzas. Mr. AUSTIN, having chosen a simpler form, tells a simpler story, which causes us to wonder that the critics should so unhesitatingly have instituted comparisons between his "message and that of Mr. MEREDITH. Even Mr. AUSTIN's straightforward doggerel, however, opens mysteriously in the second stanza, causing us to wonder whose last gasp of breath is to awaken the slumbering war-bounds. GAUTIER teaches the poetically-minded that form is everything: FLAUBERT said that a beautiful verse meaning nothing was superior to a verse less beautiful mean- ing something. Evidently this school has not yet been laughed out of exis.
of the sake tence, which, for
the simple-minded, matter-of-fact people who are too much ashamed to confess that they do not care for poetry, is perhaps a pity. Another French poet, whose name escapes for the moment, remarked that true poetry could not have truth for its object; but had only itself. The familiar jargon, art for art's sake, will be recognised. Ordinary, everyday people, supposing they avoid the temptation to pretend with so many human sheep that they enjoy this or that poet, do not always earmark the poetic follies they encounter. When ROSETTI talks of hollow halo like a cup," or of hearing tears"; when MORRIS describes a red-haired girl in a yellow frock as
a
"
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
CONTENTMENT BY IN- TIMIDATION.
(Daily Press, 1st D. cember.)
An Imperial Decree issued at Peking on the 24th instant, as a warning to those Chinese who are dreaming of revolution, is in the name of the EMPEROR, but bears internal evidence of the temper of the EMPRESS-DOWAGER. It opens with a rather amusing statement, and one that strikes us as being somewhat inconsistent with the reverence for ancestry with which we have been accustomed to credit the Chinese. It says, or the EMPRESS-DOWAGER says, that "the present dynasty has always been con. ceded as the most merciful and lenient in its treatment of the people of China, in comparison with all the preceding dynasties put together." If the translator has justly chosen the words "merciful" and "lenient," they seem to show how very peculiar is the standpoint from which those in power at Peking regard the toiling masses who year by year pay the piper. These patient people are told-for the impatient rebels will merely laugh at the warning and its futile threats-that the EMPEROR has lately been encouraging Government reforms based on modern methods; and the sugges- tion is that if there had never been any expressions of discontent at all, the need for changes and reforms would have been noticed in the palace. Thus those who had been talking together of demanding and making reforms in spite of the Manchu rulers were ungrateful fellows, blind to the paternal, or grand maternal, nature of the Government. Taxation to the limit, and a steadily dawning consciousness, induced by observation of the happier lot of their Japanese neighbours of the fact that they are not getting what they pay for, is more likely to have evoked revolutionary movem uts than deliberate excitations by lawbreakers, which is the Peking way of putting it. From what has been authoritatively said of the EMPEROR we can believe that it is not only lately that his mind has been turned to the need for reform; and released from the domineering influence of the DowAGER EMPRESS, we do not think he would have issued just this decree in question. Just as America has said that the continuance of
[December 2, 1905.
in unearthing and punishing the discontent- ed. We need not elaborate the unhappy picture that all this summons to mind. Evidently real reform is not to be hoped for yet, while such tactics are declared to be the only way to preserve general good order in the land.'
HONGKONG JOTTINGS.
28th November.
j
With the end of the month so near at hand
and the dollar standing at 2/13. the "topic of the hour" is the salary question. When exchange went down to below 1/7 the wailing of the men who are paid on the silver basis was loud in the land; while the countenances of those paid on a sterling basis wore the smile of prosperity and content. Now the lamentations are heard in the other camp. This rise in the dollar makes a lump of a difference is some men's salaries. Stories are going the rounds of certain Government officials who in the last. salaries, and now find that they are getting about $100 less a month than they were receiving before they obtained what I suppose must be called an Irishman's "increment. big rise in exchange, therefore, hits the sterling man harder than the fall hits the silver man, for his expenses are mainly in silver unless he resides in one of the hotels whose rates are Rxed in starling.
twelve mouths have earned increments in their
A
The
Since the remainder of these Jottings passed into the hands of the compositors, 1 have learnt something that affects the accuracy of the concluding remark of the preceding note. Hongkong Hotel Company have reverted to a silver basis in their charges to monthly residents and have intimated their inten- tion to continue charging in dollars until exchange drops ar in to 2/- when the accounts will again bo stated in pounds sterling, Thus even the men paid in sterling and living in the hotel are not unaffected by the rise in exchange. A married couple who have been paying £20 a month, and have now to pay (on a 2- basis) $200, will be paying about $9 more than would have been the case at the
Present rate of exchange had the sterling charges remained unaltered. The Hotel Com- pany converted their rates three years ago at au exchange of 1/8. Since May, 1903, exchange has not dropped below that figure. The approximate average exchange value of the dollar in 1900 was 2s. 0 1/16d; 1901. 1s. 1144; 1902, s. 8; 1903, Is. 84d; and 1904, 1s 10d.
same
People are now, of course, complaining that the cast of the necessaries of life in the Colony is practically the
as when at the exchange value of the dollar was 1/8. It is all very well for the consumer to demand reductions, but in comparatively few case is it possible for tradesmen to appreciably reduce their charges. It can, of course, be done on goods imported directly from gold-using countries, but tradesmen cannot afford to sell a ten-shilling article now at the same figure they were able to sell it at when the exchange value of the dollar last stood at 9/-. In the interval the dollar has been down to 163; rents have gone up enormously in the Colony, and consequently salaries have had to Tf the reader will pouder over the matter he will to enable men to pay these increased rents.
go up
the boycott would embitter and estrange those who would otherwise try to bring about the reform desire la caution which has fallen ou deaf ears, and none deafer than those at Peking so this warning to revolutionaries says their continued agitation will but serve to greatly ob. struct the progress of reforms and destroy all hopes of a re-organised Government. Something similar was forthcoming from the Russian bureaucracy, at the beginning of the present revolution in the land of the TSAR. This Chinese decree goes further, however, and thereby demonstrates how fear ful is the dowagerial mind, and how feeble is its once strong clutch upon the
realise that a general increase in rents must handle of power. Large rewards are offered inevitably lead to higher salaries, and to pay for the arrest and punishment of the these higher salaries prices generally have had discontented; and those who have been to be increased. The whole question of "the discontented are
promised forgiveness cost of living" in Hongkong revolves around and assurance of being well rewarded the question of rents-the rents, bear in mind if they will betray those
not only of the resident European population, but the entire Chinese community as wall.
kept race with the steady growth in population. The Building Ordinance of 1903 has probably checked investment in Chinese house property, for the Ordinance has entailed heavy expenses on owners of such property. These expenses are, of course, recovered from tenants in the form of higher rentals, and the have appreciably increased. It would, indeed result is that the wages of labourers and artisans be very instructive if the Government were to compile, as the Japanese Government does, a
"In glory of gold and glory of hair, And glory of glorious face most fair"— the reader, not daring to criticise where so many praise, but conscious that all is not right, murmurs vaguely about poetic licence." But poets have no licence to insult commonsense with absurdities and vacuities. Poetic licence is the permission to evade the mechanical rules of prosody so that the sense may not suffer; and its admission is a confession of the truth of our original premise that poetry is not been nssociated with them in wishing Building operations in the Colony have not a suitable vehicle for the conveyance of and praying for a better state of things. sensible ideas coherently and in order. Being thus limited to the field of pretty conceits and fancies, it will be seen that an
intelligent man may fairly relegate it to its proper place, without suffering aspersion of his intellectual reputation. It may be comforting to remember this, whenever balderdash is published over an honoured and weight-carrying.name.
who have
If the Government really has a mind to reform, as it professes, there is a much more simple way of stifling discontent and
making the nation loyal and peaceful. Instead, however, and in addition to the bribes referred to, officials are ordered to be diligent, severe, and without mercy; and others are invited to denounce any official who does not seem to be sufficiently zealous
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