NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 604, 4 September 1909, Page 9

NOTES.

. :; Mr. Birrell at; the Hardwicko. dinner gave some advice to young lawyers with a leaning towards letters'. Describing his own practice at;tho Baras "a pleasant tricklo of work between' great: margin of. leisure,'" he ob; served that, tho income-he had enjoyed as a Chancery, lawyor was, $dn times greater than that he had. obtained as an essayist, and : ad : vised such' of' his auditors .as had literary ambitions 'to 'stick, to -their, less attractive; calling. -V'Tho. worst of this advice, hbwover wise. from one - point of - view, is, tho, "Law. Journal" points- out, that the world has so much reason to bo thankful that it has not always been acted upon. Bacon,' Scott, Gray, Cowper, Macaulay, H. D. Blackmore, SUsvenson,. Sir W. S;■■Gilbert; • Calverley, Stanley, .Weyman,".arid Anthony Hope are;among the members of : the Bar who might have been lost to literature if- the. practical wisdom, of Mr. Birrell's advice had always.been;recognised. ■'.>:Theobald, .the famous editor of Shakospeare'; l ' Sir John Hawkins, .the biographer of } Jolinson; William Roscoe,. tho author of "The LifeVof-Lorenzo do' Medici"; Sharon Turner, the.historian; James Smith, part'autlior of "Bejected Addresses'.' [Shirley Brooks, the editor- of "Punch" • Sir' Theodore Martin, and Mr.'Watts Dunton—to mention only a few. of the solicitors who hayo contributed to letters—are, our contemporary adds, among the members, of /the. other branch'of tho profession who .might have been deterred by,:such ; .advice as Mr.:. ; Birrell's:from listening to their call:to literature; And the world would not willingly havo foregone- tho pleasure of reading even one essay in "Obiter Dicta" or 'fin , tho name of tho Bodleian" for tlie sake.,of knowing that Mr. Birrell's "pleasant trickle: of work" had swollen into a mighty, stream, of "flowing fees." ■ "The Voice of tho Orient" is the titlo p( a.memoir; by Mrs. Walter Tibbots,..of tho late wife of General Malcolm Nicholson, krioVn to tho literary.world as tho poetess LaiircncoHope. Mrs. Nicholson; was the daughter of a newspaper editor at Kurachi, whoso other daughter is Victoria Cross, tho novelist. ' At tho ago of 23, writes Mrs. .Tibbots, tho poet was small, with-light-brown hair and bltio oyes, and wore "baby" frocks, and hor hair, tied up hko a;child's." Sho wal married very young to Genera] Nicholson, a man of about CO, so. that sho was usually mistaken for his daughter. "Nevertheless", it was an-ideal'union'of. tho mind and spirit, for General Nicholson had-tho samo tastes as his wife, and in their private lives they both lived more lilto. Easterns than Westerns, wearing Indian dress, eating Indian: food, sitting upon the floor or reclining upon divans covered with;beautiful .embroideries— there was scarcely a chair in. tho. houseto study Pushtu romances and.Doofcr from

the-', border,'" taught" : tlienr by a Pathiin orderly, who lived--.with them. They lived at n small station named Dhisa, in . the. Scindo Desert, whero they- v,"cro almost riv cluses, only driving out together after dusk. When, tho General went to Paranpur on inspection duty his wifo would go on foot t.l meet him, and sit under the roadside trees until ho came. But at Mhow, a" much larger station, they entertained a great deal, and wero very popular, but the girl-wifo w;i3 always noted for her devotion to her husband, full of thought for him, bis health, and his 'comfort,, and-her chef d'oeuvro as a painter, as well as her' apotheosis as ft poet, was n portrait of him. Sho was considered a brilliant conversationalist. "Indian friends," remarks tho author, "say that Laurence Hope's poetry expresses a profound knowledge-of, .as well as an intense lovo for, the life- of the East."