THE LATE -MRS OLIPHANT.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9814, 25 August 1897, Page 5

THE LATE -MRS OLIPHANT.

Tt f.iIK to the lot of Blackwood to pay a ~,(li ;i tribute to the late Mrs Oliphaut, ( ,f tlie oldest and most valuable of its contributor?, the author for a long time past of the pages headed " The Looker On." litres.* i-" '*"• -'P Oll t i e excellence of the [lead novelist's work as essayist and critic, pac jtjes in which she was lees known to •hc'p» ! ''' c - inasmuch as the greater part of fiich writing was anonymous. Here is her entrance upon the scene described :—"More I thnn lmlf a century ago Mrs Oliphant as a vo'r.ii-! <''''■ remarkable literary promise L-H k-l'by the gentle ' Delta ' tremblingly Ix-for-- th« drcvl tribunal of Christopher North. 'So l"»ig i\-< she is young and Imp'iv work will do her no harm,' said the wiw/who little knew that he was addre-js-jpfTmie who more than any other was to iiiiMiitai-- imimpaired the traditions of bislieiuved 'Magn.,'and to find the crowning j «.>rk "f her life in recording its not nn- j jventf'il annals. She was already an old •or.li-il-n'tor when «he wrote first 'Christ* nas Tide' for the mcmoraWe number in riiicll fii'Oi'ge Eliot began the 'Scenes of "Iwii'/il Life,' and that faithful, loyal, brilliant \.o>k was destined to long outlive the yonrm :vml happy years of which the ' pro* ■ossor' spoke, and which, alas, were all too • eW ,' . , Jn one of her earliest poems published in theso pages she wrote, « My loiil is prodigal of hope.' But at tlie end this was only the hope that she should soon be set free from the grnfip of earthly things. • 1 have no thought,' she said to a friend of inaiiv years who saw her during her last sad nays, "' not even of my boys, only of my Saviour waiting to receive me—and tlie Father.' When she found that for her the *bb-tiile had indeed come it was with this beautiful courage,serenity and faith that she resigned herself to go."