Meet Robertulus

5 PENS IN HAND (360 pp.)--Robert Graves--Doubleday ($4.50).

Gnaeus Robertulus Gravesa . . . was born in a suburban villa at the tenth milestone from Londinium, when L. Salisburi-us was sole Consul, in the year following the death of A. Tennisonianus Laureatus, whom the deified Victoria raised to patrician rank. It is handed down that the infant [wore] a beastlike scowl, which already gave assurance of ... a mute and cynical habit of mind.

--From Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus' Lives of the Britannic Poets. Translation by W. Wadlington Postchaise.

In this spoof of Roman historians and their stuffy translators, Robert Graves makes two major misstatements about himself. He is not cynical, being far too intelligent and benign for that, and he is certainly not mute, being one of the most relentlessly prolific authors now at work. The book jacket of his latest collection of miscellaneous pieces says, "There is only one Robert Graves," but this is patently untrue. There are many--the poet, novelist, critic, scholar, mythologist, essayist, general literary pundit and japester. All of them in this thoroughly entertaining volume are in top form.

According to Baudelaire's definition of a superior man--"He is not a specialist" --Robert Graves is distinctly superior. He has strongly held, closely reasoned, occasionally absurd opinions on everything under the sun and-considering his longstanding infatuation with the lunar White Goddess--on everything under the moon too. Not the least fascinating thing about this book is his delight in the sound of his own voice, whether he writes about the Whitaker Negroes,* a child peer of England, Saint Paul, E. E. Cummings, U.S. education, nightmares or poetry.

Lei, Lee. Nothing is better fun for the nonscholarly reader than Graves's vast sneer at the scholarly mind, given at a Yale lecture. In this mock-solemn legpull, Graves gravely gives a pathologicon of pedants' diseases. Sample: cacography,i.e., bad writing, a scholarly affliction that leads to "the inability of college graduates to read or write." For some extreme types of academic affliction, Graves recommends a Demosthenic treatment: "Fill the sufferer's mouth with pebbles and make him explain his theories in simple language to a mixed audience of Texan cowhands and Boston longshoremen."

A vastly if casually learned man himself (he lets on that he graduated from Oxford only by an "arrangement" with the regius professor of English literature), Graves suggests that even as a schoolboy he could not resist the temptation to make light of learning. He declined the name of Mr. Lees, the Latin master, as "Lees, Lees, Lem, Lei, Lei, Lee."*

At various points in this book, the reader learns that Graves has "bitter black Protestant blood," inherited from a grandfather, the last Protestant Bishop of Limerick; that at his home in Majorca he writes 500 words a day with a steel nib; that he dislikes Guggenheim fellowships ("When I was young . . . one didn't expect to be publicly supported just because one happened to write unsaleable verse"); and that he likes to test a poet's verboseness by summarizing stanzas in cablese, e.g., Wordsworth's "The Solitary Reaper": SOLITARY HIGHLAND LASS REAPING BINDING GRAIN STOP MELANCHOLY SONG OVERFLOWS PROFOUND VALE.

Money, Miracles. Author Graves admits to more and stronger literary quirks, prejudices, theological theories and odd bits and pieces of information than seem possible in one man. Samples: Milton's L'Allegro is not much of a poem-Robert Frost has written better; Saint Paul was dishonest with money; Jesus did not die on the Cross but may or may not have turned up in Rome in A.D. 49; bath water in Australia "goes widdershins [contrariwise] down the waste-pipe"; the "concept of the supernatural is a disease of religion," although, paradoxically, Graves--who claims to have risen from the near dead after being officially listed as "Died of Wounds"--has no difficulty in believing in the miraculous.

Even at the height of his "cantankerousness" (Graves's own word for his special quality), he writes with clarity, charm and wit. The collection includes several stories so funny that it is difficult to believe they first appeared in Punch.

* Who lack sweat glands and thus must wear water-soaked long underwear (Graves read about them in TIME'S Medicine section).

* In the British order of declension: nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative.

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