LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume LII, Issue 55, 5 March 1921, Page 18

LITERARY.

The small amount of our real knowledge of Shakespeare's life ami career has uften been commented upon. Mr. J. C. Squire put:; it well in a review of a new book on Shakespeare: "The latest .■d:{ inn of Sir Sidney Leo's 'Life of Shakespeare" contains T7G page-; of small [jrint. including the index, 'but not including the advertisements. In my copy 1 keep;', single page leaflet issued some years ago by Mr. 'William Poel, and hearing all thru we re»lly know of Shakespeare up to Uie year l(iO3. plenty (if room being left for tables of the principal conjecture* end rumours. It is a skeleton biography. One might call it a skek-tuii biography at tlie fen«t." Lord Murlfjr of Blackburn. nln.ni >~iiu- still cali -.1111111 Morlpy." celebrated liis Kind birthday on Christmas Kve (say> Uie "Timea""). lie spend* many cheerful houra in the noble library of his home in Wimbledon J'ark. but may be met occasionally in a district train on his way to look in on London. II is n coincidence that three living men of letters who have made I heir mark in statesmanship' were born in the same year. Lord Morley's 'birthJay \va< December 24. 183S; 1.0r.l r.rVce's. May 10. IS.iS: and Sir lieorgf Trevelynus." July JO. 1838. The lalo Professor Lec-ky was born on March -lj IS3S. anil Lord Rathmore. better known as David l'lunket, on the following December :'.. The year was therefore pro litie in 'learning, mind, and eloquence. Mr. Frank Coffee hn> t;atliere,l hiimpressions of forty years' wandering in the Pacific into a \oliiuu> of some :'>.'>r pa.iCH freely illustrati-d with reproduc lions of photograph*. Mr. ( ufT.-o's h (mother ease of a publisher turning author, reversing tiie disastrous experi enee of .Mark Twain. And there is c.-r tair.ly something to i>e *aid for thi publisher-author, for in his former i-apa, city he has a useful training in cnltiva tinpr a sound judgement as to what tin people want- There is no connected plan in the volume under notice. Till writer wanders from ii review of th( growth of civilisation in the Fijis to i dissertation on wireless or the making nnd drinking of kava. But there is on< thing that he does besides affording i slinipse of Alaska and Japan, and thai is supply a little information about mosi of the islands up and down the lenjjtl and breadth of the wide Pacific thai have any claim to commercial prominent! or tourist attraction. Mr. Coffee doc> not burden his text with many statistics but lie eeems reliable in his sources o information and fairly accurate in hi: deductions. Also in the main he avoid dullness, which is a virtue in books ef : traveller's miscellaneous observation?. "Thrum*"' should be in mourning to day, say 3 a recent English paper, for i has lost one of the two illustrious son which it has given to the world —•Dγ Alexander Whyte, one of the great I'm* of Scottish preachers, and one of thi most well beloved. The relations be tween Dr. Whyte and Barrie wer naturally closo. The '"Scotsman" in it obituary notice says that 'Jim" Barrif as Dr. Whyte called the author, gravi tated to St. George's Church when h came to Edinburgh. One day Barri went to him and asked if he would giv him a certificate, because he was {join to try for the post of sub-editor on i Nottingham newspaper. Dr. Whyle sai he did not know that Barrie knew any thing about that class of work, and tha he would not give him a certificate, bu that Ire would write to the newspape proprietor about him. And he wrote '•I do not know that he has had muc experience as a newspaper sub-editoi but if I wanted a sub-editor I woul trust that young mpii with that work, He got the place. But he did not sta lon<*. and Dr. Whyte gave him an intre duetion to Mr. Stead. Mr. Stead sai that his work, while it would not sui him, might suit Dr. Greenwood, th famous journalist. Barrie afterward told Dr. Whyte how he came to writ for Greenwood. He said he just trie his hand on a little Kirrie story, an having finished it he lighted his pip and went for a stroll, taking with hii the story, which he dropped into th letUr-box of the "St. James's Gazette. "He sent around for mc next morning, Barrie said, "and I have never wanted guinea since." 1 Engi'sh writers are regularly passed jver in the awarding of the Xcbr; prize r or literature. Jlr. Kipling has been the >nly English winner. There seams to be io doubt that Kmit Hamsun, the Xor.ve!gian writer, who recently received the 1020 prize, is a remarkable novelist. He ras the son of a farmer, ami epent his 'h'Wnood in the dark, desolate Xjrdan.l, the chief town of which is 53 miles north of the Arctic Circle. He had no :dt!cation, and as a boy became apprenticed to a cobbler. Then he ijeeame a locker, and taught himself enough t.i jualify for the position of a school tsher. At last he got to Ghristiania, but iisliked town life so much that lie "leared off to America and earned a living at all kinds of manual occupations intil he became a fisherman on the Xewfoundland coast, where he felt more at liome. Eventually he came back to his own country to load the life of a literary recluse. He published bis first ivopk when he was thirty, but it was not 'until recent j-ears that he established his claim to be the leading novelist of his time in .Scandinavia. He has long had a great reputation in Russia, ivhere his work has made a wide ap,pea'l. Mr. H.G.'Wells says of Hamsun's novel ■Growth of the Soil" that it is amonSf the very greatest novels he has read. On the other band the award oif the prize for li>l9 to Carl Spitteler. of Lucerne, has ex-cited a good deal of astonishment in Sweden. Spitteler is very little known outside a small circle of admirers. He is 7-i. and hia last important work was published in l!>06. One Stockho-lm paper said: "It will be a bitter disappointment to interested circles that a T.'i-vear-old Swiss poet of no international importance has been ■preferred to the ffrand old man of English literature, Thomas Hardy."

BOOKS RECEIVED.

"Australia: Economic and Political Studies," edited hy Meredith Atkinson; Macmillan and Co-, Melbourne. "The New Social Order," by Meredith Atkinson; Macmillan and Co., Melbourne. '■Tliinps That Have Interested Mp," by Arnold Bennett: Ghatto and Windue"Rhythm. Music and Education," by Eniile Jaqucs Dalcrozc; Chatto and ■\Vindns. '11.M.3. Renown in Australasia," the magazine of H.M.s. Renown: Australian Publishing Company, c "R«gg} - , Queenie and Blot,' , a story for children, by Mrs. Edith K. Cuthell; Stanley l'aul and'Cotr