LITERARY GOSSIP.

Press, Volume LXIV, Issue 13159, 4 July 1908, Page 7

LITERARY GOSSIP.

A great Anglo-American• iag contest for a prize of ioUUU petween Mr Max Pemberton, representing England, and Mrs Mary E. Wilkins Freenvan, representing America, ¥5° t«d its final stage recently in the"New York Herald" (reports the "Duoly Mail's" correspondent). For more than three months past tho readers of thatjournal have had spread before them ou parallel pages successive instalments cf the two novels, one dealing in Mrs Freeman's unique style with nnddleclass life in New England and cntrUed "The Shoulders of Atlas." and theotber entitled "Sir Richard Escombe,' giving a dashing and romantic series of adventures of a cavalier and his lodv love in tho of George 11. An "« the happy ringing of wedding beJis the drab characters depicted by Mrs WUkin's pen and the duel-ecarred hero and dainty heroine imagined by Mr Pemberion to-day settled down beeido their respective hearths in blissful prosperity. It now only reroftins for tho leaders of tho "Herald" to give their final casting votes. Each week einco tho competition began, thousands of them have sent in criticisrce of the various instalments explaining why they preferred the doughty Sir Richard's oxpdoits to the New England vuJnge tragedies, flavoured with psychophysiological studies, or vice versa. Mrs Freeman, who has an enormous advantage in being a woman and an American, while Mr Pemberton suffers from the fact that he is a man and appealing to a foreign audieJice, leads this week by 2526 votes. She has on her sid-o 20.176 recders, against 26,302 who wero filled with enthusiasm, by Mr Pomberton's stirring descriptions. Unless, therefore, the English novelist sesures an enormous poll in the course of tho ensuing week, tho £5000 will be awarded to America's favourite lady writer of fiction.

That admirable critic, "Elzevir," of tho "Argus," has an interesting note on •Mγ Alfred Austin. He roundly condemns the jingoistic verse we quoted last week, but holds that in bis true metier Mr Austin is a poet. Ho says: —"There are few human beings for whom one feels more sincerely compassionate than for Mr Alfred Austin, Poet Laureate. For years he was simply ono of England's minor poets, a writer genuinely gifted, though not of glittering brilliancy. His books came unobtrusivoly forth, and made their gentle appeal to a small circle of readers. The Press treated him respectfully, if without enthusiasm; to the general public he was quite unknown. Then, suddenly, tho great misfortune of his lifo overtook him: he was made laureate. The critical world sent up ono universal howl of derision, and the general public, without taking the trouble to read his works, concluded that ho must be a concoctor of particularly infamous doggerel. Since his affliction came upon him each successive volume —and he has published many—has been greeted with the samo howl": he has become tho favourite butt of every Boventh-rate critic in tho British Epipire; and to tho man in the street, who has read not a line of his yerso save the very unfavourable specimens of it which have appeared in hostile reviews, he has become a by-word for incompetent mediocrity. If he be thin-skinned, as most poets are, Mr Austin is to be commiserated. And ill this hns befallen him through no fault of his own; ho has remained, all along, just what he was before they made him laureate —a ouiet, unassuming, quite genuine poet, with limitations. Even the youngest of us has his limitations."

Which English book has the best title? Them are many good titles, but on the tvholo Dr. Robertson Nicoll gives the palm to "Arrows of tho Chace." the title which Rnskin gave to his collection of letters, and which, by tho way, Dr. Nicoll misquotes as "Arrows of the Chase"). It appears that this title was not hit upon easily. A friend sugsested to Ruskin "Public Letters." Rnskin replied that he did not like it. and that as it was a lovely afternoon ha was coins for a walk, in tho course of which he hoped to hit upon some? more "mellifluous nomenclature." Tho suggestions that fol.lowed the walk were "Spare Minutes," "Spent Shot," and "Surdis Auribus." His correspondent in turn suggested "A Quiver of Arrows," but Ruskin thought this a little too poetical. The author then su chested "Totus in Illis." "Here and There," and "To-i-inv." Three dnys later he recommended "Signals on the Old Road." The following week he preferred the title "The Faegot." Three months later he exclaimed, "At last I have got ft —"Arrows of tho Chace,'" and "Arrows of the Chace" it was. Of how few titles can one say that they are secure, final, and satisfying as this is. Oickens's exercise of mind in getting titles is well shown in Forstor's biography, and he was not on the whole very successful.

A good pen and ink portrait of Sir A. Conan Dovlo is given by Mr Joshua Harris in "T.P.'s Weekly." "Conan Doyle," he writes, "is big and burly and strong. His bigness and burliness and strength are the first facts in connection with him that impinge upon your consciousness. But there are quite a number of men who aro big and burly and strong. A mere tabulation of such commonplace attributes is not very much more descriptive than a landlord's list of fixtures. There is a suggestion of mighty forces held in chock about him, though, that is hardly so common.' His movements aro rather carefully restrained; his voice is keyed to an unnatural, low, growling note; he seems as if he were bent on making as little of himself as possible. That is only at first, however. As soon as he sets excited—and he gete excited very soon—ho begins to roar and thunder and indulge in free and spacious gestures that make you tremblo for the ornaments: to throw out his chest and bulk ever larger and larger in the middle distance, until ho fills the whole picture and swallows up foreground and background and overflows on to the frame. But there is something very engaging in all this. There is a boyish—the word recurs inevitably —simplicity and unaffectedness about him, then, that is quite irresistibly captivating, especially to women. Again, he is so delightfully wrong about himself and all his works in every possible way. He does not, for instance, love his Sherlock Holmes stories—which are, of course, the only things he is likely to be remembered by, whereas he does inordinately love such books as 'A Duet' and The' Stark Munro Letters, , which, frankly, seem to mc to be nothing less than "literary disasters. And he fondly imagines that he can write about books "with taste and a certain insight and discrimination—which he never comes within hand-grips of doing, though he can talk about them very wisely and sanely indeed, and is really an "excellent judge of a novel—as all novelists aro."