LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12933, 12 October 1907, Page 7

LITERARY GOSSIP.

The annonncment that a new edition of Palgravo's "Golden Treasury" is to bo issued by the Oxford Press in their edition of standard authors is particularly welcome (says a London paper), as it is to contain no fewer than one hundred additional poems (to the end of tho nineteenth century). The volume Avill include the whole of FitzGerald's version of "Omar Khayyam." Count Leo Tolstoy has produced T a new work, under the title of "Do Not Kill," but he does not consider it «c vet quite ready for publication (saya the "Tribune's" St. Petersburg correspondent). According to Tolstoys wife, he is engaged in remodelling his work, as he is accustomed to do. Every di>y he changes the manuscript, making corrections, additions, abbreviations, and so on. After that it is again retyped, and the next dey Count Loo reads it through in the most careful manner, making new corrections, thanks to which it becomes necessary to retype the manuscript once more. "Do Not Kill," which is written in the form of an article, hae already passed, declares the Countess, through twenty proofs. It » interesting to recall the cirenmstaoces in wiifch Green's "Short History of the English People," of which an illustrated edition is to be iasned by Messrs Newnee in serial form, was written. The work was began et a time when the author had no hope of living for more than another six months. «nd although he had resisted the first severity of the attack by the end of that period his iWtuem continued. Harassed by suffering, by

anxieties m to aJivelibood, and by the lack of books in the k>n« winters abroad, he toiled on bravely. «n completed hie work at the end oi fir© years, when he wee little more than thirtysix yea re of age. He found hie reward in the generoue welcome given to hie book by eoholam «nd by the En«l»h people. The unique character of the work consists in its being "a history not of English kings or, English coiv quests, but of the English people." The illustrations of the new edition amount to 1400, including 250 .full-page engravings and 32 maps and plane. The work will be issued in 40 fortnightly parts, beginning on October 4th, and the price of each part will bo 7d net. "There ought to be • close tirao for human beings," remonstrate* Mr Andrew Lang in the "Illustrated London News," "a period during which it eliall not be lawful to introduce them as characters in norele—that is. under their real names. Novelists generally select traits from living people of their acquaintance, or even caricature them, as Charlotto Bronte did in tho case of the Curates, of Madame Heger, and 6f> on. Simple as I eeem, I have sat for the hero of at least one novel, ami as the villain of other*. In c recent norol Robert Burns appears, and i* made to behave deteetabiy. This dot's not seem fair. Burns not oeing a "iiblic character, like, say, Jamas VI.. with whom any freedom may be taken. It really appears m> if, except in tho case of king*, one should not make free in a novd with anyone who lived after tV end of tlio Kixtoonth eeutury." The particular provocation for this protest is, however, an egregious book lately written by an American authoress about tho Courts of Austria and Russia. '"I never saw such a novel," declares Mr Lang. "The Tsar appears (some timo ojzo) *s 'a tall, awkward pindling youth.' What the verb 'pindle , means I know not I fie arid 'his little Princess of Hesse' appear as freely as if they were not living people, and deserving of ordinary human respect. The Empress-Dowager of Russia is also among the people i butchered to make an American holiday. A letter by this lady is given, in which she speaks of 'my small successor,' the Tsaritsa. The Empress signs j her letter 'Marie de Ruesie,' and I suppose that ehe -would no more use that signature than Marie Antoinette the i style of 'Antoinette de Prance.' This J signature proved, in fact, that a letter attributed to the Queen, in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, was a forgery. Probably the American lady, who drags living and honourable women into 'her most distasteful tale, knows as much of Courts as she knows of the French language. Tons mes salutations' ie an example of her French. The limits of her acquaintance with natural history are indicated in the phraee, 'bloodhounds etill screaming for their prey.' She writes about 'a little table containing an exquisite dejeuner, , which sounds as if the breakfast were shut up in the drawers of the table. The hero of this romance, a prince of one sort or another, ie living with his father , * mistress, a professed lady of pleasure. The hero does not know the truth, nor does the father, and the eon is married to an Austrian archduchess. On the night of his wedding he hears his bride •wearing at and ■eoMthig iher maid, usmer 'a final unmentionable epithet. . She hits her maid in the face with the heel of her shoo—a deed unusual, 1 suppose, among archduchesses. It ie into this kind of eooietv €hat the novelist brings living men and women." An English newepaper, trensiatinp: from * French contemporary, said "the Goolds had an accomplice, a women whose name the journal ignores." What should have been written was, "a women of whose nemo the journal is ignorant," but the translator wae misled by the seeming familiarity of the French word "ignore." Similarly the French "transaction" is generally rendered by the same word in English instead of by "compromise.; . On the other hand, the French take their revenge by translating, for example, Mr Crockett's "Stickit Minister" as "Un Minietro Aseassine 1" Mr* E. W. Cunnington. write* to us:—"l have just received a letter by English mail from Mr Edmund Bouchier, an Oxford classical student of very high Attainment, a nephew of the late Arthur Baines,' of Upper Ricoarton. In the letter he saje 'Can you introduce my last Work into New Zealand, a translation of the 'Poetics , of Aristotle with explanatory notes P (Publishers: BlackweU, Oxford; Simpkins, and Marshall, London). It is quite unpretending, about eighty pages; but there has been no recent edition with English notes, though Professor Butcher's essays are very useful in their way. Several of Aristotle's allusions have been now elucidated by discoveries of papyrus in Egypt. It is a much more interesting book than the logical treatises which I translated previously, and has always had a great influence on literary criticism."