LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12975, 30 November 1907, Page 7

LITERARY GOSSIP.

The not infrequent habit of alluding to Bacon as "Lord Bacon" has been rebuked by the "Academy," as Bacon's titles were successively Sir Francis, Viscount Verulam, and Viscount St. Albans. In defence of the popular error, however, Mr G. Stronach writes to the journal:—"lt is of some interest to know that Macaulay's great essay was entitled 'Lord Bacon,' and that on the backs of Spedding's great editions wo find 'Lord Bacon's Works' and 'Lord Bacon's Letters and Life.' On tho subject of the title, 'Lord Bacon,' Spedding said: —'As a man he must be Bacon; as a Peer ho must be Lord; and the two together make "Lord Bacon," and so. I fear, it must remain. To correct the name by which a popular man is known is a vain ambition. , "

j Tolstoy's plea to be saved from begging letter-writers on the ground that be is a poor man, will come as a surprise to tho public (remarks a New York paper) The sage of Yasnaya Polyana has raised himself so high above the genorajT jhuman level in most things that it is a shock to feel be has not raised himself above want. His estate, it would appear, b"e transferred twenty years ago to hie heirs, displaying therein a consciousness of his own business limitations which is at variance with his revolutionary ©conomio views. Still, there are his writings. When ordinary American novelists live in Italian palaces, surely so vastly popular a writer as TtCstoy, leading so simple a life, ought not to bo in want of ready change for purposes of charity. But it must be remembered that Tolstoy ha.? refused to avail himself of the protec-

tion of the copyright law, and that whatever income he derives from hie books comes probably iv the form or gratuities from conscientious publishers. And we fear that the mere cost of entertaining American and English visitors who make pilgrimages to lolstoy and write about them in tho m&gasines and Sunday supplements, would be a drain on any private exchequer.

There is some talk, I see (says a writer in "M.A.P."), of the County Council schools being provided with copies of tho portrait of Shakespeare for hanging on the walls of their cJassrooms. This is all very well, so long as it does not load to more dramatists than we already havo in the tiekl. or looking over the hedge- into a field too crowded to hold another pnir ot feet; but when report speaks ot the portrait of Shakespeare, whirh portrait does it mean? "With what particular countenance of tho many countenances of Shakespeare is tho County Council I scholar going to bo trained to associate the poet's immortal works? Is the C.C. scholar to lx> brought up to believe, that the plays he is not going to read, if ho knows it, were written by the dark. un-English. thick-lipped gentleman of the Chandos portrait, or the rabbit-faced Charles 11., which stares glassily out of the Shakespeare canvas of Bruges? Perhaps he will get it into his poor little brain that the works of Shakespeare really emanated from that impossible area of forehead, which stretches from exist to wost on the picture by Mnrtin Droesliout. The l>e.st thing' for the County Council to do" is to chooso the portrait which is most like Hall Came. The scholar will then be able to realise how Shakespeare came to be so clever.

Mr Clement Shorter, who hns somereputation as a critic, has bron writing amazingly about Georgo Eliot. "I venture to believe that if Mr Birroll was to re-read Adam Brde" or 'Middlemorch' to-day he would find them mighty dull books." He calls George Eliot a "laboured manufacturer," and accounts for her being read by s.\ving that '"the conceit of culturo which caught the few in the seventies and eighties has now caught tho ''many." We do not beliove (remarks the "Daily Mail") that anybody reads George Eliot for that reason. Tho ''culture' , of ono generation docß not impress tho next. Georgo Eliot is read by the many to-day because they find her intending. And loug - may they continuu to do so!

What does the "man in the street"' who reads books at all really like to read? (asks the same, paper). At his most intelligent we believo he does both buy and read the many volumes of -classical reprints which are being issued in such numbers at prices to suit his pocket. Otherwise it would not pay tho publishers to produce them. What he, or his feminine counterpart, reads in the way of fiction, not perhaps altogether at his brightest, is indicated by the returns made by a librarian, who tabulated the first 500 volumes issued by him on a certain day last month. The authors whose books were asked for were tho following, in order of numbers:—Rider Haggard, Mario Corelli, Conan Doyle, G. A. Henty, Joseph Hocking, Charles Garvico, Rosa Nouchette Carey, Ferg\is Hume, Miss Braddon, Nat Gould, E. Phillips Oppenheim, W. Lβ Queux, Silas Hocking, Mrs Hungerford, Adeline Sargeahtj Edna Lyall, Mrs L. T. Moado, Florence Warden, Mrs Alexander, Guy Boothby, Max Pemberton, Rita, John Strange Winter, Curtis Yorke. It is as surprising a list as any of its kind we have Been. It does not contain the name of a single novelist undeniably of tho first rank, either living or dead. It is a pleasant surprise to find Mr Rider Haggard heading such an assembly, and Sir A. r Conan Doyle,not far off him. But what are we to think of Mr Rudyard Kipling's total exclusion, even when we have resigned ourselves to that of all the great English novelists of the past and of Mr George Meredith and !Mr Thomas Hardy of tho present? Rudyard Kipling and the .Rev. Silas K. Hocking! The one is chosen —seven times—and the other is left. It is amazing 1 And what has become of Mr Hall Came?

"Ten Thousand • Year" is a novel that had an enormous vogue when it was first published nearly eighty years ago, ond it is etill read, if not so much as formerly. Samuel Warren, its author, the centenary of whose birth was reached last May, is the subject of an interesting article by Mr J. Is. Atlay in the October number of the '"Cornhill Magazine." Warren, "the ablest, yet vainest'of men/ has had the ill-fortune to be remembered chiefly by his weaknesses of character. These included an egregious vanity and "an undisguised partiality for the nobility." There is a story told of his perambulating the Assembly Itoome at , York with a very lovely girl on his arm and saying to her:— "It is perfectly unpardonable how these people stare at mc." "I am so glad you told mc," was the innocent reply. "I was afraid they might be looking at mc " Thackeray satirised his snobbishness ns illustrated in his famous novel, and tho oft-told tale of Sergeant 31urphy'e bon mot is worth telling:— Warren "had been discoursing on his experience 'at a certain ducal' mansion, presumably Ahiwick. 'Would you believe it,' ho said in tones reminiscent of Talbot Twisden, 'wo had no fish.' 'I suppose,' interpolated Murphy, 'that they had eaten it all upstairs.' "

It has occasionally been debated whether American humour is or is not truly humorous, and renders of a work tho prospectus of which has f.illon into our hands (says the "Literary World") may bo enabled to come to some dotinite decision on the subject. A certain Professor of a well-known American University and "author of advanced scientific treatises" has issu<xi another work, "aptly described" (we quote from the publisher's notice) "p.s a manual of flornithology for beginners," 1$ is entitled "How to Tell the Birds from tho Flowers," and the following passage is a sample of its contents: —

"To tell the Turnip from tho Tern, A thing which everyone should learn, Observe the Tern up in the air,

She how he turns—and now compare Him with this inert vegetable, Who thus t<* turn is quite una-ble, For he is rooted to the spot, Wihile as we see the Tern is not; But the Turnip is not doomed to be Thus bound to earth e-tern-ally, For 'cooked to a tuTn' may be inferred To change the Turnip to the Bird."

The enthusiastic publisher goes on to declare that the author "might claim close affinity to Lewis Carroll, the * profound mathematician ana creator of tJio inimitable 'Alice in Wonderland' drolleries," and we read on to learn that:—'Nature students who have hitherto wrestled with the annoying problem of differentiating between such homologous species as thtCrow and tho Crocus, the Parrot and the Carrot, the Cow-bird and the Cowslip, the Blue Mountain Lory and the Blue Morning-glory, will hail this littte volume with shouts of joy.. No longer need one worry over the close resemblance of the Pecan to the Toucan —"and so it goe3 on. "Joking wi' de«ficulty" would seem to be a weakness not confined to Scotchmen.