NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 1, Issue 193, 9 May 1908, Page 12

NOTES.

"It is inconceivable' that the British House of Commons should work itself into a state of high excitement over a question of literary influence," says, the "Evening Standard." "In this country the Government and all concerned in supporting, or opposing it db iitcraturo and art the sorvica of ignoring them. In France things are different. Tho Chamber of Deputies has been showing how vehement it tan become on the subject' of . fiction from the ■ social point of view. When the Bill for a grant of 35,000 francs for' the removal of, Zola's remains to tho Pantheon camo .up fo'r' discussion, M. Maurice Barres argued! vehemently against it. Ho held that Zola's works had given the. entire world a false, impression of French morality, and that if the Hoiiso consented'to the'' author's enshrinonient in tho Pantheon it would ratify the libel on its constituents. Great excitement, we read,' was displayed by .th 3 different parties, the Conservatives applauding, Radicals and, Socialists protesting loudly. Encomiums of Zola were forthcoming ( from M. Jaures, the . Socialist leadov, and M. Douroergue, Minister of Education," As a protest, the Due do Moutebello, with the assent of all his family, has, written to the Government demanding authorisation to remove the remains of his illustrious grandfather, Marshal Lannos, from' the Pantheon to the family vault in the Montmartre Cemetory. Confronted with such ail unprecedented demand.the Government will probably' .refusa to' rtcogtiise any right 011 the nart of the Duo de Montebello to withdraw, "his ancestor's body from tho national sepulchre. • . •., ■■■■■,'

"Mr. Owen Seaman is tho Prince of Poetic Impersonators; the Grand Madjouff and Bil-zliouk-extraordiriary of Parody; he can imitate Swinburne better than Swinburne himself, and produce so plausible a travesty of Kipling that the Bard oLEmpiro is convinced lie niu§t have writfen it .himself on some lato '.'evemng'at tho club." . So writes the .Glasgow "Evening Nows." ; "But Mr. Seaman's cnicf claiin/on the gratitude ,of his country is that lib restored to it some reputation , for tho genuine sense of-fun: iln the two''years he has. beori editor of -Punch' he- hits .placed it, so far as its', letterpress is, .on a higher pinnacle than it has v over occupied before, even in the days of Thackeray-, arid Blanchard; and ' riiado Wedncsday'-tho merriest day of the week in countless British homes. If v.'c would realise tho deadly solemnity; tho Saxon fatheadedness, the awful banality of English humour, during the last half of Queen Victoria's reign, wo turn to tho old files of -'Punch' and search between its. brilliant' illustrations for a gleam- of , genuine comedy. All that is' poor, in the fun' of 'Punch' to-day survives from that period of underlined puns, pot-house ploasantries, and ceaseless, jokes on mothers-in-law, fat ladies, and plain spinsters of uncertain ago; 'Punch' was the husky huiriorist of tho London bars, arid ita pictures and its prico alone maintained the flagging interest of the public. It would have been killed by this time, perhaps, but for tho advent of Mr. Seaman, who realised that Cockney humour has its limitations, ancl that two. or three men cannot be expected to keep up shrieks of daughter week in week, out for 1 years without a great deal of 'outside assistance."

In one of his essays Stevenson somewhere says, "Conceive that little thread of memory that wo trail .behind us broken at the pocket's edge, and in what naked nullity should we be left!". The phenomenon of the slitting of the thin-spun thread of memory (says tho'"Manchester Guardian") was perhaps less common when ;tho remark was made than it' is now.. One reads from timo to time of soniebno found wandering at large, unable to give aji'y, account of himself, having forgotten both name and habitation. From being an incident in actual life, loss of memory has passed as a motive into fiction, and it is curious to note how diversely it has been handled. Ono writer represents a character who has thus, lost his .label resolving to ascertain his identity by a process of exhaustion,. He hits upon the amusing expedient of acting as if. ho wore, this or. tho other notability—if people accept him as such, good and ■ well; but if not, why, he is at least one step nearer, selfidentification. On tho other'hand, in that remarkable book "Somehow Gbod" the treatment is very different.' Algernon Fenwick loses his memory in consequence of an electric accident in tho Tube, ■ and the story - of the nun with his own past hidden from himself, yet with recurrences in which that past seoms on tho,very vergo of coming back, is handled with a skill that makes tho book ono' of the striking things of recent fiction. ' A third instance is a book of Harland's, writton at a time when tho problem of dual personality was a favourite theme with writers of fiction. It was only a shilling shocker, but the plot is good enough to be summarised. A female convict, wearied of her past, consents to have her brain operated upon by a doctor who lias forcibly prevented her from committing suicide. From the operation she awakens with a mind blank upon the past, and having everything to learn over again, from the alphabet onwards. This gives her a fresh start in life, and in tho surroundings of the doctor's household sho develops into a refined and graceful woman, so that presently a sculptor, ignorant of her history, marries her. A stormy journey across the Atlantic induces in tho lady a malady of vision which tho doctors at Havro pronounco paralysis of the optic nerve with a curious complication. Tho specialists at Paris confirm this diagnosis, and connect tho complication with a slight depression of ono of tho bones of the skull, upon which they beg tho husband's permission to operate. The husband consonts, with tho result that the woman awakens from this second operation the woman who underwont tho first, and tho husband finds upon bis hands, instead of tho gentle brido he has so recently wedded, a convict with ' rough manners and a gift of strong language. Tho" situation is solved, of course, by tho woman succumbing to tho effects of the operation; fence.