LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 237, 3 October 1908, Page 12

LITERARY.

Mme. Modjeska's "Memories and Impressions" will be published in two volumes. The first deals with her lite in Poland, and will embrace recollections of Paderewski, the De Reszkes, Sienkiewicz and other notabilities. In the second she will treat of her American experiences, beginning with her arrival there years ago as a member of a group of Poles hopeful of establishing a new Utopia in California. The new novel by Mr. Justin McCarthy, which the Harpers are publishing, is called "The Duke's Motto." It is a cloak and sword tale, the scenes of which are set in old France and Spa in. Some relies of De Quincey in the shape of scraps of copy and proof sheets, with corrections and. additions in his handwriting, have been acquired by a Manchester library. They have much interest as showing the minute care with which De Quincey weighed ana measured his words and phrases. Concerning these remnants of his literary life, "The Manchester Guardian" says:—"He changes 'however' into 'howsoever'; he strikes out a sentence apparently because it impedes tlie swift progress of his argument; he inserts a word for the sake of the cadence it gives A o a phra.se. In a fragment of a few lines he expresses a very emphatic view of a celebrated King of the Jews: "This man History denominates Herod the t.reat; obviously for his artistic merit as a first-rate murderer, since of other accomplishments he had confessedly none at all." De Quincey's hteiary work was carried on under great pressure. He speaks of the floor being covered two feet deep with books; of the dilliculty he had in finding what he wanted—'it killed mc to stoop,' he says; and ho is always anxious for an extension of time. We see that in spite of his great gifts and long practice in composition he was to the end a severe critic of lis own writings—altering, amending, expunging, and adding until his thought was clothed iv language transparently lucid and full of music." The literary shrines of England have, year m and year out, their undiscouraged pilgrims, but now and then one of these returns with an illusion or two badly damaged. Witness the following plaint, communicated to the "Manchester Guardian" by a tourist who thought he would find joy in the George Eliot cruntry, and especially looked forward to a cup of tea in an old cottage in the shadow of Coton ("Shepperton") Church. He says:—"The trip was delightful, but in the old English cottage there was a nasty jar. On the wall I saw a coloured plaster representation of the neighbouring church, and the spelling of the inscription, "Schepperton Church," aroused my suspicions. I tinned it over and found tne inevitable "made in Austria" on the back. While we were taking tea the cottage woman offered us coloured postcards of George Eliot shrines. They were all "printed in Bavaria." When I pointed out that trading in these things was rather incongruous in a cottage priding itself on its old English character the woman waj much surprised. "Well, I never! You don't say as they be foreign? I did s-.:e them names, but I thought' as it wor summat to do with the books. She wor so queer about names, callin' our church Shepperton and such like. It n llavs puzzled mc as she should use a man's name wot worn't her own. So they be foreign? Well, well; 'live and learn,' they say." Apropos or George Eliot, the editors of the new complete edition of Ruskin have reached in one of their latest volumes the essays en "Fiction, Fair and Foul," which he first printed some twtnty-five or thirty years ago. In these he paid his compliments to the novelist with all his wonted candour. One of her books he compared with "the sweepings out of a Pentonville I omnibus." To a correspondent who remonstrated with him he wrote:—"You i are not alone in your admiration oi [ George Eliot, nor did I write my criticism of her in any expectation of its being accepted, but, as 1 do all my own work, with absolute disregard of public opinion and on principles of taste which hive been forgotten for three hundred years. No critic is good for anything who cannot judge of a painter by a line an d an author by a sentence. I read enough of George Eliot ten years ago to know her qualities, but having some personal regard for her said nothing about her til! the time came when other people think the fitting occasion come for their praise. I have always praised the living anr" judged—the dead. The ambiguity you complain of means simply that in detesting with my whole soul the paltry tiagedies of the modern novelist I would not trouble myself with such a vile story as that of "The Mill on the Floss" until my friend's confused report of it necessitated my doing so. Foregone conclusions are the business of modern cliques, parties and sects. Mine have been tried tor half a lifetime before a word of them is written." The novelist, Rene Bazin, in a lately published essay on "Les Lectures," shows an inclination to be contemptuous on the supposed difference between those who read and those who do not. He say* that the valuable thing is, not to Jiave read much, but to have thought much over what one has read. "Above a!i," says "The Mall Gazette." "he is anxious that his readers should not. confound the knowledge of the alphabet with morality, and runs full tilt at Victor Hugo's apothegm that to open a school is to close a prison. On the contrary, he declares that the majority of criminals are nowadays educated to the extent of being able to read and write, thereby forgetting, perhaps, that the same thing may lie said of any other class of the community. He especially warns his readers, alsw, against the notion that the book which is artistically written, which is beautifully expressed, and which therefore contains no expressions or descriptions which would not be tolerated in the speech of polite society, is necessarily inoffensive, and can lie read with impunity by all alike. The test of decency he would apply is that of a mother reading aloud to her unmarried daughters, which he declares to be one of the most instructive sights in the world; and he tells us that he has often been struck in such a case by the keenness of the reader's judgment are the coner.ni-m.-'.te and natural art with which she manages to skate over the thin ice. Finally, he implores the fair sex to whom thfc essay is particularly addressed, to iced books of many styles and by authors of many nations—French. English. Italian, and Spanish—such literatures being, as he says, so many windows open upon the world. By so doing he tells them, they will be able to delect at once what is and is not bad taste, and to suppress this last as certainly as 'a hatpin can deflate a bal*«t>B.* "

Sir Hubert Parry, the English composer, has written an exhaustive book on Johann Sebastian Bach. It is at once a biography and a critical and historical study of the great man's lifework. Mr. George Meredith, we are told, has in his desk an unpublished novel which is not to be given to the world in its author's lifetime. More than that, it will not be published until some years after his death. At the time of his employment in the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, Mr. David Christie Murray had a curious glimpse of Disraeli in a mood of temporary artlessness. The House had not risen until after sunrise, and in the early summer morning the journalist overtook the statesman in the street, on his way home. He thus describes the incident:—"The street was empty, and he was crawling along, leaning heavily on his walking-stick, and clasping his left hand on the small of his back with a gesture which bes-poke him as being in severe pain. He heard my footsteps behind him and turned. . . At the second at which he became aware of mc he drew himself to his full height, and stepped out with the assumed gait of a man in full possession o" health and strength. He twirled his walking stick quite gayly, and he maintained that attitude until I had passed him by. No author of any nationality has ever produced books which can compare with those of Shakespeare for world-wide popularity. Five hundred foreigners, at fewest, have translated them into their owr tongues, including such little known languages as Icelandic, Servian, Bohemian, and Polish. There are to-day as many German readers of German translations of Shakespeare as there are English readers of the original in English. It is estimated, that there are now over six million volumes of Shakespeare's works in circulation, and the deifland is so great that nearly every publisher of nfite issues a special Shakespeare edition of his own. When he visited Oxford Henri Tame was much struck by some of the literary young ladies whom he met. One of them was Miss Arnold, a niece of the poet and critic (now Mrs. Humphry Ward the novelist), who was introduced to liim by .Towett as " a very clever girl." " She is," writes Tame, "about twenty, very nicelooking, and dressed with taste. Miss Arnold was born out in Australia, where she was brought up till the age of five. She knows French, German, nnd Italian, and during this last year has been studying old Spanish of the time of the ('id. also Latin, in order to bo able to understand the medieval chronicles. All her mornings she spends at the Bodleian Library—a most intellectual lady, but yet a simple, charming girl." She told him that she was writing an article —her first—for "Macmillan's Magazine," and excused herself by saying, "Everybody writes or lectures here, and one must follow the fashion." Many years afterwards, he wrote to Mrs Ward, criticising very favourably her first novel, "Robert Elsmore," which she had sent him. not telling him that she was the writer. Mr Stanley Weymnn says that his new novel, "The Wild Geese," is to be his last. "I think," he said, the other day to a writer in the "Bookman," "I have told all the tales I have to tell. 1 should not care to go on writing till the critics began to hint that I was repeating myself, and the public was beginning to feel that it had had about enough of mc. I consider I have been fortunate; critics, publishers, the public 1 have all treated mc well, and 1 am not j going to presume upon it. lam 53; I have had a long run, and would far sooner quit the stage now, while I am still playing to a full house, than go on and tire the audience and ring the curtain down at last on balf-empty benches." Ex-Inspector Henry Roberts, of PenI traeth, who has been a member of the I Carnarvonshire police force for overj34 years, has collected over 80,000 Welsh i proverbs, over 1000 triads, and has read I the Bible six times over. He has also I begun a concordance of the Welsh Bible. and has gone as far as the letter* "0." Mr Roberts is 77 years of age, and in the course of his duties he has walked over 280,000 miles. A sketcli or Tolstoy, elicited by the SOth anniversary of his birthday, is contributed by C'live Holland to the "Pall Mall Magazine" for September. The writer quotes from the Russian reformer's own aeount of his early years, in which he accuse? himself of having met with contempt when he expressed longings for a virtuous life, and received encouragement when guilty of gross offenj ees. "I cannot," he says, "now recall those years without a painful feeling of horror and disgust. I put men to death in war, I fought duels to slay others, I lost at cards, wasted the substance wrung from the sweat of the peasants, punished the latter cruelly, consorted with vile women, and deceived men. Lying, robbery, drunkenness, evil of all kinds, violence and murder were all committed by mc. Yet 1 was not less esteemed by my j equals to be a comparatively moral and | admirable man." This relates to the first I ten years of Tolstoy's life away from j home, but towards the end of that period indications appeared of t lie Tolstoy he eventually became. These were manifested in his determination to devote himself to country life. Tolstoy speaks English, French, German and Hebrew well, is an able Greek scholar, and has some knowledge of several other languages. His correspondence is voluminous, and he has arranged forty or fifty thousand letters in chronological order in cases; to all those lie has replied either with his own hand or by dictation. To a recent English visitor he said: "Tbe four gospels as a guide to life and condu;t should contain all tlie teaching you require." It is on these, in fact, and on the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount, that Tolstoy's idea of life is based. A Tolstoy colony founded on socialistic principles, consisting chiefly of Russian refugees, exists at Christchurch, Hants, England, which adheres to v<"»etarian principles, cultivates the land, and applies its energies chiefly to the printing and circulation of Tolstoy's works, under the auspices of the "Free Age Press." The September "Pall Mall" contains an illustrated article showing the multiplicity of purposes to which electricity is applied on the two great Cunard liners: A master clock synchronises the time nil over the vessel, boot cleaning, kneading dough, cutting sandwiches and bacon, dish-washing, knife-cleaning, ea&boiling, and a multitude of other useful purposes are performed electrically, in addition to the larger sphered in which electric appliances play such an important part. Gilbert L. Jessop contributes an article on "The Fielding of To-day," and the number contains the usual varied selections of illustrated short stories.