LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXII, Issue 129, 1 June 1901, Page 2 (Supplement)

LITERARY.

Personally (writes our London correspondent) I am not at all inclined to congratulate Dr. Ibsen on his 74th birthday, and to "join in wishing him a still longer span of that mortal life into the seamy side whereof he has exhibited so disquieting an insight." My view is that the world would have been a little cleaner without the Swedish genius and his works. As to their truth, I have certainly met characters who resemble one or two of his most famous creations, but they are not so black as he paints them by a very, very long way.

The "Daily News" pays Dr. Fitchett's "Wellington's Men" a very high compliment. It says:—'"Surfeited though we are with the 'red wine of war/ we are bound to say that we were unable to put the book down until we reached the last page."

Mr H. C. Irving has based his new work, "Studies of French Criminals," to be published by Mr Heinemann, on the extreme forms of passion, cynicism, refined cruelty, and sheer brutality, which the law dignifies by the name of crime, as shown in such criminals as Lacenaire, Troppmann, Prado and RavachoL Mr Irving has gone to authentic sources for his studies, and has endeavoured to select tho9e criminals whose individualities and misdeeds remove them from the category of ordinary malefactors.

When Mr Spurgeon's colossal biography i 3 "boiled down" into a single volume of reasonable proportions it is hoped room may be found for the following eminently characteristic deliverance on clerical dress. It comes from the Rev. John Home, of Ayr, who heard it from Spurgeon's own lips in .the Tabernacle at a prayer meeting: —

"My friends sometimes ask me," he said, "why I do not wear at least a white tie. I will tell you. If I wear a white tie, why not a clerical collar? And if I wear a collar, why not a clerical vest and coat? And having got so far I could easily then don a preaching gown; and after that a more elaborate robe and bands. I might then be induced to try a surplice,' followed by a stole. By that time I might have an eye to a mitre, which might lead me to a cardinal's hat and rig. Then only remains the tiara, and I become a fullblown Pope. No. I will not wear even a white tie, because in principle the others follow."

"Besides," added the great preacher, "I like to preach as a man and not as a cleric."

To all who know the manner in which many a well meaning broad church cleric has too often begun with a cathedral service and strayed upward to candles, incense and forbidden garments Mr Spurgeon's utterance is both racy and pungent.

The "Life Romantic," by Richard Le Gallienne, has been deservedly "slated" all round for its sentimental silliness and nastiness. Here is a sample of the dialogue of the delectable confection. The hero, Pagan Wasteneys, and on of his —ahem!—romantics are making true love in a hansom. They do it like this:— "Do you think I can help you?" Daffodil asked, oh, so womanly. "Some day," said Wasteneys. "Is there to be a 'some day' for us?" "Can you doubt it? Don't you know?" "Yes, I know." "May I call you 'Daffodil?'" "Yes—Pagan." "You darling!" Here follows six stars. Daffodil was Mrs Daffodil Mendoza, and Pagan Wasteneys was under the impression that she was a married woman. "I always think Mrs such a charming addition to the prettiest name," i 3 Pagan's comment, and six stars, as usual, are the consequence. This is the opening chapter, and things go from bad to worse. A really slashing review in the "St. James' Gazette" (the wording of which is reminiscent of "National Observer" times —the N.O. did not like K. le G.) winds up thus: —"Perhaps we have sufficiently indicated fhe character of a book of which we are almost inclined to say that the plain pornography and underclothing of 'The Quest of the Golden Girl' is to our mind the more acceptable. Reviewers are compelled, unfortunately, to read this kind of stuff in. their day's work. We will quote but one more passage in justification of what we mean. 'In a sense the nurse's profession is a peculiarly tragic form of prostitution. The nurse sells her mother love for money, as another woman sells her wifehood; both being slaves of an unjust society.' There may be more disgusting passages in English writing than that, but if so we do not know them. The sentence is a key to the contents of the book, and the character of the kind of hero with whom Mr Le Gallienne chooses to befoul clean paper—a creature who goes slobbering from woman to woman, making eyes at himself in the glass, whose existence is perpetual beslavering with kisses either of females or himaelf; who in moments of emotion finds himself lying 'face downwards in the grass crying like a child,' who carries with him a notebook in which he jots lyrics about hair and gloves and loves and shoes; who is ass enough to 'burst into tears' because he sees" village children playing near the village pump; a creature to whom adultery is a whim, yet whose heart is still 'pure/ who comes, as a line in one of his own poems expressed it, 'with a pure face from a thousand sins.' This is the stuff out of which Mr Le Gallienne makes -the sexless pimp's client who does duty for a hero. If we had the slightest conviction that advice would have any effect on Mr Le Gallienne we should recommend him to read something clean before he writes again. We at least are glad to turn to the cleanness of the wiliest novel on our shelves for a mental wash basin."

Few authors could have less in common than Miss Yonge and William Morris—the High Church Christian and the avowed Pagan, the stickler for all feminine proprieties and the unconventional Socialist. Yet Morris' biographer tells us that the book which had more influence than any other upon "Topsy" and his set at Oxford web "The Heir of Redclyffe." Mr Mackail says of Morris, Burne Jones and their friends: —"The young hero of the novel, with his overstrained conscientiousness, his chivalrous courtesy, his intense earnestness, his eagerness for all such social reforms as might be effected from above downwards, his high-strung notions of life, friendship, and honour, his premature gravity, his almost deliquescent piety was adopted by them as a pattern for actual life, and more strongly perhaps by Morris than by the rest, from his own greater wealth and more aristocratic temper. Canon Dixon, in mentioning this book as the first which seemed to him greatly to influence Morris, pronounces it, after nearly half a century's reflection and experience, as 'unquestionably one of the finest books in th« isorld.'"