LITERARY NOTES.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXI, Issue 184, 4 August 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES.

Virile, capable, and, as usual, marvellous for the accuracy of their technical details, Kipling's "Stories of the War," in the "Daily Express," give us something1 to look forward to each morning" with our matutinal eggs and bacon. They resemble "Plain Tales" rather than the author's later work, and he reverts to the preliminary versicle:—

"Put forth to watch, unschooled, alone, •Twixt hostile earth and sky; The mottled lizard 'neath the stone

Is wiser hero than I. ' This is the old thing and the real thing, and the true position of the Britisher at the front is not likely to be more perfectly hit off in any quatrain that has yet to be written. The pompous incapable brainless jack-in-office is our Kudyard's special detestation, and we fear the E.S.O. of "Folly Bridge" will have a sad time should he be recognised.—(Our London Correspondent

Let the Sydney "Bulletin" look to its laurels. That journal has, so an enlightened, sample of N.S.W. youth told us the other day, "an unekalled repitation for chick (sic) paragraphs" in Australia. But we picked up yesterday a California print which will, we imagine, make even the "Bulletin's" editor snort enviously. It seems that recently a member of a well-known sporting family eloped with his sister-in-law, a girl of sixteen, "a plump, delicious little California peach," over whom every marriageable swain had lost his head and had falle in love beyond hope of resuscitation. This sporting gentleman came and saw. He loved her with a fierce sort of love, "the ferocity of which was not lessened by the knowledge that other young men were suffering." The mother implored him to wait a year till sweet sixteen became sweeter seventeen. In reply she was shortly rung up on the telephone, when this dialogue ensued: "Hello! Hello! Are you Mrs W ?" "Are yoxi there? Who are you?" "I'm jimmy B . Pearl was sorry she couldn't stay to say good-bye. We were married last Saturday. We are just off to Florida. See you later. Tra la la la!"

The American journalist who comments upon this dramatic incident does so in this manner: —

PRELIMINARY SEASON. First Race, Matrimonial Stakes, for maiden two-year-olds, straightaway dash, any distance, free for all, catch-as-catch-can. Won? Why, of course, by Jimmy B , sired by Mr F. B. , and damned by half the bright young men who failed to win the prize.

Admirers of Mr Barrie, who has got no nearer South Africa than Bournemouth, will be interested in knowing that the Rev. William C. Conn, minister of the "Auld Licht" Church at "Thrums" (Kirriemuir), having withdrawn from the Synod of United Original Seceders, has been received as a minister of the Established Church of Scotland. Mr Conn, who was ordained at Kirriemuir in 1897, was, it will be remembered, charged by the "Auld Licht" with being guilty of the irregularity of preaching in the pulpits

of pther denominations, a charge which the Presbytery did not, however, sustain.

In the "Contributors' Club" of the "Atlantic" a writer proposes a revival of satire, but satirically pleads that, if revived, it should not attack literature, since "the ideal literary conditions now exist, and they must not be mocked at." The existing ideal conditions are these:—"lf trained advertisers make a man's novel succeed his future is made. He can go on writingnovels until his invention flags, and then he can write magazine articles telling- how each one of them was written. Then he can, take to writing reminiscences; and after that anecdotes about his early contemporaries. Besides, he can at any stage of his career deliver profitable lectures, and give readings from his own works. It is seldom that a man, once started, fails in literature now that it has become a department of commerce."

The gentlemen who are said to'be "raising Cain" because their likenesses appear as the illustration to a story in one of the June magazines surely cannot be, as the "Academy" states, "Mr Le Galliene and Mr Harmsworth. The story the "Chronicle" meant and described, as roughly resembling in plot 'Anstey's "Giants Robe" must be "The Wrong Author" in "Pearson's," but there are no pictures there of Le Gallienne. The latter bard's'famous atramentous locks are as well known as Patti's diamonds, and besides, John Lane, not Harmsworth, is his publisher. The presiding genius of Vigo-street may be in the illustrations, but. few even of his intimates will find him.

Who shall say there is naught in heredity when one finds Harold Farjeon and his sister again appearing as composer and librettist of a promising operetta, and Mr Ronald Macdonald, son of George Macdonald, producing a romance of that fascinating historical period, the days of James 11., the Prince of Orange, and "Bloody" Jeffries. That the publisher of this first book should be none other than the mighty Murray (John Murray) himself is of itself no small feather in the young author's cap. The story has been christened- "The Sword of the King."

We have received a well-got-up brochure of poems, "A Song of Auckland," and other verses, from the pen of Mr iT. M. Torrens. The preface sets forth thaf'New Zealand,'having been the first to suggest and offer assistance to the Empire in the Transvaal crisis, and her accepted sons having proved themselves so conspicuous in valour, the author has thought the present an opportune time to issue this brochure, and hopes it will be found a desirable souvenir of New Zealand in general, and Auckland in particular." The best verses in the collection are those entitled "Ups and Downs." The volume opens r with a "New Zealand Anthem," which is followed by "A Song of Auckland,'" in which the writer "chants" what he terms a "ditty":—

"For tho Kauri and the Bell-bird,

For the fields of yellow grain. Tho flocks upon a thousand hills,

And the shoals^that swell our main."

A footnote considerately explains that the word "shoals" means shoals of fish! The Harbour, Hemuera, Takapuna, and even Avondale, are apostrophised in more or less glowing verse. Eotorua, too, claims a couple of pages all to itself. We give the two most striking lines of the "Wonderland" poem: "Where once Volcanoes, thundering, roared. And spread Earth's Entrails on the board." Mr Torrens can flatter himself with the thought that not even Byron or Tennyson, at their best, were ever delivered of such a sublime fancy as that contained in the last line!