LITERARY NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXX, Issue 88, 15 April 1899, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES.

' In the new quota of 'Stalky and Co.' 5n the March 'Windsor Magazine,' Mr Kipling deals as before with the three adventurous chums in study, number five, and describes how at the instigation of their friend 'the Padre' (chaplain) they deliver a small boy from the hands of two big bullies and teach the said bullies a sadly needed lesson. Talking of lessons reminds us of a little one which Rudyard recently administered a cheeky lad who wrote to him that he saw from the papers that his words of wisdom were paid for nowadays at the rate of a shilling a-piece. He begged to enclose 12 stamps for a sample. Kipling pocketed the shilling and replied 'Thanks.

It did not require much prescience rto predict that Mr Massingham and Mr Henry Norman were not likely to pull together for ever as co-edit-ors of the 'Chronicle.' Still the connection has lasted longer than most people anticipated. Mr Norman's reason for quitting the 'Chronicle' now is that he wants to devote himself entirely to the writing of books. His •work seems to him and his friends 100 good to waste on ephemeral literature.

It is a pity the volumes of the new Biographical Edition of Thackeray are Buch big clumsy books, because Mrs Ritchie's introductions make them very well worth having. The February volume 'Philip' contains many interesting fresh facts concerning- the starting of the 'Cornhill Magazine, ■which for a couple of years or so seemed likely to lower the colours of even 'Blackwood.' But Thackeray •was a failure as an editor. He began fairly well, and of the initial number of the orange-covered monthly, 120,000 ■were sold. But his own judgment, especially in fiction was faulty, and instead of exploiting George Eliot, Chas. Eeade, George Meredith and Wilkie Collins, he ran Anthony Trollope of death. True some of the latter's best novels appeared in 'Cornhill,' but even at his best, Trollope •was not strong enough to bear the fortunes of a magazine on his skoul- • ders. Besides Thackeray developed impracticable ideas. One of them was that 'every man, whatever his profession, might be able to tell something about it which no one else could say, provided the writer could write at all.' So Sir Henry Thompson received a request from the editor 'to describe cutting off a leg as a surgical operation, and do it so that a ship's captain at sea, who had not a doctor on board, would be able to take a sailor's leg off by reading your description.' The scheme did not of course succeed, nor would 'Cornhill have gone on long if it had. It is significant that most of Thackeray s correspondence at the beginning ot Jiis editorship consists of letters—from Carlyle, Motley, and many others— giving reasons why the writer could not do what Thackeray wanted. A letter of a very different kind is that sent him by Elizabeth Barrett Browning, in reply to a very delicately phrased'rejection of her 'Lord Walter's Wife,' as incompatible for the •boys, girls, infants, sucklings, almost, -who were counted among the men and women' who read the first Cornibills.' 'I confess it,' writes the Poetess 'never was any one turned out of the room for indecent behaviour m a more gracious and conciliatory manner,' and further on,- .referring, to. his •standpoint of the pater-familias,' she ■writes, 'What if mater-familias, with her quick sure instinct* and honest innocent eyes, do more towards the expulsion (of a certain clas^ of evil) fey simply looking at it, and calling it by its right name?'

The Queen has given the 'Hundred Best Books' craze a potent lift by ordering a set of Sir Jno Lubbocks selection from Harmsworth s._ The •Daily Telegraph' is now going to enter the field with the 'Hundred Best Novels,' for which, 'tis said, Mr Courtney will compile a list. Meanwhile the booksellers profess themselves ajrhast at this new departure of big newspapers turning into publishers and salesmen. But the success of the instalments experiment has yet to be demonstrated. Time payments are all yery well for cycles or sewing machines, or pianos. If your client doesn't pay you seize the goods, ana can generally furbish them up to look as smart" as though new, and you ye got a certain amount of the defaulters money to the good. But sets of books! iWhy, if one only out of your hundred gets lost or dirtied, or ill-used, the value of the lot drops 50 per cent, or so. Directly a book has been read it incomes second-hand, and 'half published price' is an excellent rate to get if or any second-hand work. Two years hence ( if not before) there will be any number of sets of best books and Encyclopaedia Britannicas in the market at a fourth of the prices now being asked.

. Augustine Birrell, himself an ideal teorrespondent, makes light of the comroou complaint that the art of letter writing U dead, killed by newspapers and postcards, and other modern influences. It is not so, he resnarks in an article on the subject iwhich you will .find in 'Great [Thoughts.* Good letters may be fewer *han of old, but they are still written, and ever will be. 'Wherever there are delicate spirits finely touched, en-' Bowed with the subtle gift of friendship and a love for the words and {thoughts that breed delight and awaken sympathy, there will be found good letters.' Mr Birrell then names some of the best letter writers brought to notice during the past twenty years: Mrs Carlyle, Edward Mtzgerald, Bishop Thirlwall, Robert £owe, Charles Bowen, William Cory, and Mary Sibylla Holland.

The newest humorist at present convulsing America is Mr Finlay Dunne, ■who perpetrates the 'Dooley Papers' Weekly in the Chicago 'Journal.' A selection from these mad waggeries has been made for English consumption, and will shortly be published here by Routledge as 'Mr Dooley in Peace and War.' According to the 'Academy,' 'the scheme of the work is simple. Mr Dooley is an Irish-Ameri-can saloon keeper in Chicago, with opinions on public affairs, and these he delivers to his friends in an exquisite brogue and a wealth of comic and vivid metaphor which even Mulvaney might envy.' In order to whet our appetites for this luscious morsel, Mr Hind adds a passage from Mr Dooley's dissertation on colonisation. This is what the funny fellow pictures iAmerica saying to the Philipinos:— •Naygurs,' we say, 'poor, dissolute, unteovered wretches,' says we, 'whin th' terool hand iv Spain forged man'cles f'r ye'er limbs, as Hdgan says, who was it crossed, th' say a,ri' sthruck off th' Hjome-alongs? We did, by dad, we did. 'An' now, ye mis'rable, childish-minded apes, we propose f'r to larn'ye th' loses iv liberty. In ivry city in this ?mlair, lajid we will erect school*

houses, an' pac-kin' houses, an' houses iv correction, an' we'll lam ye our language, because 'tis aisier to lam ye ours than to lam oursilves yours, an' we'll give ye clothes if ye pay f'r thim, an' if ye don't ye can go without, an| whin ye'er hungry ye can go to thj morgue—we mane the resth'rant —an' ate a good square meal iv ar'rmy beef. . . We can't give ye army votes, because we haven't more thin enough to go round now, but we'll threat ye th' way a father shud threat his ehildher, if we have to break ivry bone in ye'er bodies. So come to our ar'rms, says we.'

'Prophets of the Century,' a series of essays edited by Arthur Rickett, M.A., L.L.8., has been issuer! in Ward Lock and Co.'s Colonial Library. The. men who In. the judgment of this writer are entitled to rank as nineteenth century seers are Wordsworth, Shelley, Thomas Carlyle, Emerson, Tennyson, Browning, George Eliot, Rusk'in, Whitman, . William Morris, Tolstoi, and Ibsen. This selection is susceptible of adverse criticism, and it would be easy to suggest amendments, nevertheless few will question the right of anyone in the category to rank among the literary prophets. The editor, in his preface, announces that 'the aim of these essays is to present in a popular form the teaching of those master spirits of the age, whose ideas have helped so largely to influence the minds of men in this century. The treatment adopted has been expository rather than critical, to meet the need of those who, before enteringupon a study of the writers dealt with in this volume wish to know something of their message.' The writers chosen for the work have faithfully fulfilled the aim thus set forth, and have produced a serviceable and very readable series of reviews of the style and teaching of the authors enumerated. We have received a copy of the book from the publishers through Wildman and Lyell.

Mrs Molesworth is responsible for many a pleasant hour spent, and as a family novelist she has a strong claim on the affections of the rending public. 'The Laurel Walk,' which Messrs Grant and Kichards recently added to their Colonial Library, and which has reached us through Messrs Geo. Ilobertson and Co., Melbourne, has all the good points of the author's style. If in the story of Mr George Morion and his girls, Mr Ryder Morion, and Mrs Littlewood, and her son Horace, not- to forget the uneasy spirit of the Morion grand aunt, there is a tendency to go into commonplace detail, one can forgive it, for the naturalness of the story, its quiet but steady interest, and .the absence of an unpleasant pruriency, all too common in modern fiction.

There is something" of /an art in AVriting" a good short story, and although many attempt fiction in a nutshell, the number of really good magazine stories that one reads are few indeed. That indefinable something which raises the short story above dreary commonplace seems to be possessed in no small measure by Frances Forbes llobertson, a quantity of whose work has been published under the title of 'Odd Stories' by Messrs A. Constable and Co. in their Colonial Library. These stories bear the stamp of tbe ultra-modern school, and occasionally one presumes are couched in an allegoricaal vein which lays the writer open to the charge of obscurity. A majority of the collection, which compx-ise a score, some new and some republished from periodicals, are excellent stories of their class, The writer has a charming way of dealing with a love theme, and the fascination of .the stories lies partly also in a sympathetic tinge of sadness. Such a story as 'Princess' is short of idyllic, and will be read by the average person with unalloyed pleasure. While 'Monsieur Paul,' 'Princes Cesarini,' 'Jotchie,' '.In an Idle Hour,' 'As It Happened,' 'Eeply Paid,' 'The Misdeameanours of the Lady Gertrude,' and *The Death of the Profligate,' are alike excellent and should not be missed. Messrs Upton and Co. have forwarded us a copy of the book.

There is a capital article on the subject of penny-a-liners in March 'Cornhill' called 'By-ways of Journalism.' Many stories are told of these journalists which aptly illustrate their common habit of regarding every event from, the standpoint of their own special work. One of them coming home one night discovered, a man insensible at his threshold, and without losing a moment he called out to his wife, 'Quick, my dear, bring a light. Here's a paragraph lying on the door-steps!' As another 'liner' was walking along the quays of Dublin a man rushed past him and jumped over the wall into the Liffey. The journalist immediately looked at his watch. 'How provoking!' he exclaimed. 'It's six o'clock, and I'm too late for the last edition of the 'Evening Mail,' and, addressing the suicide struggling in the water, he added, 'All right, my boy, I'll give you a good .paragraph in the morning papers!' Occasionally the 'liner' produces- a, gem of unconscious humour. 'The murderer,' wrote one 'liner,' was evidently in quest of money, but luckily Mr Ducan had deposited all his funds in the bank the day before, so he lost nothing but his life.' Another 'liner,' describing a street accident, wrote: 'The unfortunate victim was taken to Guy's Hospital, where he now lies, progressing favourably, although he is sedulously attended by Dr. J. R. Robertson, the resident surgeon, and some of the leading members of the medical staff.' In a report in a Glasgow newspaper of. a shipwreck off the coast or Ayr this appeared: 'The captain swam ashore and succeeded in also saving the life of his wife. She was insured in the Northern Marine Insurance Company for £ 5000, and carried a full cargo of cement.'

The feature of the February 'National Review' is the exhaustive manner in which the Dreyfus case is dealt with. An excellent article is contributed on 'The Scope of the Enquiry,' by the late Under-secretary for Home Affairs (Sir Godfrey Lushington* ; another entitled 'A Clerical Crusade' by F. C. Conybeare ; and an able article by the editor headed ' The Real Mystery.' Mr Maxse puts his conception of the real mystery in the following question : ' Why have the French military authorities fought so furiously against the Revision of the Dreyfus case, seeing that on their own assumption the guilt of the prisoner is so glaring that nothing can result from a re-hearing except a confirmation of the original conviction ?' The Hon. W, P. Reeves gives a clear and cogent account of the New Zealand Old Age Pension Scheme and other interesting articles are ' Grub Street of the Arts,' Austin Dobson ; ' A Rejoinder to Professor Schafer,' Hon. Stephen Coleridge ; 'My Two Chiefs in ;the Crimea,' Admiral Manse ;, and

' The Rule of the Chartered Company,' H. C. Thomson. The synopsis of affairs under the title ' Episodes of the Month,' 'American Affairs,' and • Greater Britain,' are as usual comprehensive and interesting.