LITERARY NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXVIII, Issue 258, 6 November 1897, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES.

If Messrs Harper really expect The Martian to achieve the success of Trilby they must be sanguine persons blessed with singularly small literary judgment. All the faults of Dv Maurier's earlier work are there, and none of the virtues. Occasionally no doubt we come across bits of obvious autobiography, but they are smothered in discursive and often painfully trivial chatter. Altogether, The Martian is a great disappointment.

Chattos have issued a new library edition of Man and Wife, which was the last good novel Wilkie Collins wrote before opium deteriorated his remarkable abilities. Readers of the younger generation who don't know the book can be confidently recommended tobbur} r or borrow it. The character drawing is particularly strong, Geoffrey Delamayne, Sir Patrick Lundie, Bishopriggs, and Annie Silvester being all exceptionally successful studies.

Mark Twain's book—now finally christened 'Following the Equator'— is complete, and he has received £8,000 for it, half of which goes to his creditors. The New York 'Critic' says it contains about 70 or 80 chapters, each one of which is headed with a new Pudd'nhead Wilson maxim. One of these reads: 'The best protection of principles is prosperity.' The poster that will be used in advertising Following the Equator' represents- Mr Clemens tilted back in a steamer chair with a yachting cap pulled well over his eyes. Under the picture, in a facsimile of his autograph, is the line, 'Be good and you will be lonesome.' 'As there is no one in sight,' adds The Lounger, T take it that Mr Clemens is good.'

One may with certainty look for unusual cleverness in any new novelist introduced to the British public by William Heinemann. The Gadfly, by E. L, Voynich, therefore will excite great expectations. The title is distinctly good, alluring, and suggestive of many possibilities, and the text on* the title page audacious. Also the story begins well. There is novelty in the character of the sensitive dreamer Rivarez, whose faith in God and man was rooted up eternally by the discovery of the treachery of two Jesuit priests, one of them his beloved friend and teacher. When, however, after a prolonged disappearance Rivarez returns in the character of the sharp-tongued 'Gadfly,' and the story plunges into the intricacies of Italian politics, its interest for English readers wanes. The writer, Mr Voynich, is an American, and has not read Mr Howells in vain. His fellow-country-men are biting eagerly at the Gadfly. Though the physical beauties of Marie Corelli are, doubtless for good and sufficient reasons, hidden from an adoring public which clamours abortively for her portrait, we are not suf- I fered for long to forget the intellectual perfections of the author of Ziska. The fair Afarie's latest admirer is, curiously enough, a near relative —Annie Mackay. This lady has added to the happiness, if not the gaiety, of nations by cutting from the Corelli masterpieces a selection of wise, witty and tender sayings. They are appropriately bound in a small green volume entitled ' The Beauties of Marie Corelli,' and will materially lighten the gloom of many an editorial sanctum even if they don't do anything else. Here are six samples. The familiar &ng of the first is a delusion. You have never, never heard aught like it before:—■ 'Methinks those who are best beloved of the gods are chosen first to die.'—From Ardath. 'The, heart-whole appreciation of the million is by no means so "vulgar" as it is frequently considered.'—ibid. 'We are never grateful enough to the candid persons Who wake us from our dreams.'—From Vendetta. 'Who can adequately describe the thril^ng excitement attending an aristocratic "crush?"'—From Thelma. 'Genius is a big thing; I do not assume to possess it.'—From The Murder of Delicia. 'Great Heavens!'—From Ziska. Those of our readers who came across a novel called 'A Dreamer' some fifteen years ago and liked it can confidently send to the library for 'Our Wills and Our Fates,' a rather cumbrously christened story which the same authoress—Katherine Wylde —has just brought out. The central situation sounds luridly melodramatic, dealing, in fact, with the marriage of a young man bent on revenging the assassination of his sire to the murderer's daughter. But the treatment of this not unfamiliar imbroglio is adroit and the drawing of the chief character admirable. Mrs Oliphant, at her best, did nothing better than Dean Caernarvon—in fact, the Caernarvon family generally are wonder-

fully able portralta oi the well-mean, ing but insufferable pidlistines. The unconventional hero, Geoffrey, is not quite convincing, but Marie and her adventuress mother will appeal strongly to all fem__xte<= readers.

The Invisible ____, Mr Wells' last contribution to semi-scientific romance, begins in a vein of farce and ends in grimmest tragedy. The opening chapters rise little above the level of Jules Verne, but the finale is tremendous. From the chapter in which the Invisible Man describes to his old friend his complicated experiments and their highly uncomfortable and unforeseen results the tale moves at. a great pace. We see him first of all a wrapt student expecting marvels from invisibility. Instead he finds himself cold, naked, hungry, hunted from pillar to post, and more helpless than the meanest beggar; unable, too, to recover his' visibility, though evertrying. Horrors grow on him. From being an outcast he becomes a rebel, an enemy of society,one m^., against the world, the maddest and most dangerous of Anarchists. The neighbourhood hunt him, and he hunts the neighbourhood, killing and maiming the weak and the old. Finally there takes place a grim fight for life between the Invisible Man and his old friend the doctor. The hunted terror of society is caught at last, and most pitiful is the re-entry he makes into the visible world he left so boldly. .

The articles on 'My Contemporaries in Fiction,' which Christie Murray contributed to a syndicate of newspapers . last year, have now been revised and bound up in book form. Mr Murray places Geo. Meredith at the top of the tree amongst living writers, Hall Came second, and Kipling third. Few will be found to deny the claims of the first and last named. The complexity of his style and subtlety of his philosophy make Meredith's novels caviare to many of us. but there can be no question three at least of them will live. Kipling, of course, appeal to a far vaster public. Mr Murray's appreciation of him seems kind enough. But —as a writer in the 'Pall Mall' shrewdly points out —it is inadequate. For Kipling's pen has told us the story of men who would never have spoken for themselves, has taught us to admire the workers, not the spouters. 'In straight-flung words and few' he has given a new ideal of duty and of honour—the two drum 1' mer boys marching alone against an army, the beardless subaltern dying cheerful in a cholera camp at honour's bidding, the weary commissioner thinking, while his glazing eyes watch his wife's boat tack too closely across the Indus, of his duty towards his charge—of duty without any palaver or high falutin'. The crimson thread of his sympathy for those who would never think of claiming any recognition for themselves seems to link our great Empire closer to the mother country. When the future historian comes to examine all the causes which marked the rise and growth of the Imperial idea during these later years the work of Rudyard Kipling will be appreciated to the full. As for Hall Came, one can only say Mr Murray overrates him. Hils high-water mark, 'The Deemster,' may live, but the less said of his later work the better.

The late E. J. Milliken, who died lately, was the poet of 'Punch,' and the most regular, industrious and hard-working member of Mr Burnr. and's literary staff. Probably, indeed, it would not be far wrong to allege that many weeks the editor and Mr Milliken wrote the leading comic journal themselves. The jokes forwarded by the public to 'Punch' are, of course, innumerable, but not one in twenty can be utilised. Mr Milliken produced practically all the verse. He invented "Arry' and his ballads in that role are redolent of the real Cockney vulgarity. Also, he produced each, week the rhymed letterpress to accompany Tenniels cartoon, and occasionally also suggested the theme. Mr Spielmann, indeed, declares Milliken's services at the weekly discussion on this subject were quite exceptional. In ~.ome respects he lived for the cartoon. ■ He filled his note-book with suggestions for it. His mere failures might have furnished forth the topic of the week for the whole of the comic Press. The cartoon was often chosen on his suggestion, though, of course, net invariably so, for he sat at a council board and with no casting vote. Mr Milliken's part in 'Punch' has been happily defined by its historian as that of general utility man. He was able to turn his hand to anything, and he was always ready for the event of the day, no matter what its nature— a situation in politics, the deat»i of a celebrity, or a crisis in the affairs of the nation. Aoart from all this, he showed his gift for social satire in a number of typical creations. He was a capital parodist, and when a book deserved that treatment he could expose its absurdities in the most telling of all object lessons. ' ,

Eleven years ago Mr Milliken's faculty for social satire involved'Mr Punch in a libel action. The article was entitled, 'Mrs Gore-Jenkins: A Suburban Political Lady,' and poked fun at the league meetings, garden parties and other political blandishments of the wife of the MP. for the Brixwood Division of Norton. The cap was promptly fitted on by Mrs R. Gent-Davis, whose husband was then member for the Kennington Division of Lambeth. Mr Milliken lived in South London at that time, and was known to be a Liberal. Unusual acerbities were thus imparted to the case with the result that in December, 1896, the genial editor of 'Punch' was committed for trial. By the time the case came on in the Superior Court, however, all parties had had opportunities to cool, and the little ebullition ended with pacific apologies. Mr Milliken once gave a capital answer to a lady who complained that 'Punch' 'is not as good as it used to be.' 'No,' assented Milhken, genially, 'it never was.'