THE BOOKFELLOW.

Evening Post, Volume LXXX, Issue 38, 13 August 1910, Page 13

THE BOOKFELLOW.

Written for The Post, by A. G. Stephens. (Copyright.— All Rights Reserved.) THE WINTER-SLEEP. Heedless of outer frost and icy sleet, in his leaf-lined nest the dormouse rests, Curled in the hollow tree-trunk sleeps the bear, Till all the anguish of the Winter dies. Wasted with fasting, keen with life renewed, Forth to the fresh effulgence of the Spring Emerge the furry darlings of the snow. Thou that am I ! perchance thou too wilt wake, Gaunt with okl slumber, hungry from tho grave, Wilt upward heave the poppied church-yard-mould, Wilt lift the eyelids dark with ancient dust To greet the splendour of a spiritual day, Where life, made perfect, blossoms into light, Where, vivid with unutterable joy, Spring sings for over through the fields of God. — Edward Tregear. BALZAC. _ In France, after a period of depreciation, Balzac maintains his place as tho greatest- writer "of romance. In England and elsewhere, his national virtue operates to lessen his international fame, i'et Balzac was indebted to English writers ; particularly to Stfott. M. le Breton says even that Balzac's tedious passages were partly due to Richardson. Fenimore Cooper, whose literary esteem in France we find as difficult of comprehension as a Frenchman finds our literary esteem for Dumas, also contributed inspiration to "The Human Comedy" — which took its title,, by rebound from Dante's "Divine Comedy." . Balzac lived 51 years from 1799 to 1850. In thirty years of literary activity he wrote ninety-two published books of fiction, besides shorter stories and less significant dramas. His unfinished schemo ' required him to write fifty-two more books. Balzac's gigantic work has been a quarry for later authors. In fecundity and energy no writer has surpassed him. Balzac has been a fruitful subject for English commentators. The story of his life is told anew in Frederick Lawton's "Balzac" just published by Grant Richards. Lawton takes advantage of the most recent French criticism and enquiry; and his readable account gives an excellent view of his author. Hi 6 criticism is efficient, but not highly original or decisive. - On the Path of Fame. The salient features *of the Balzac legend grow familiar. Balzac was a little, I burly man, with a magnificent head. All his mature life he was a slave of the pen. At his most vigorous period, having set himself a task, he ' rose at two o'clock in the -vmorning, and wrote till six. A hot bath followed. From eight till nine he received visitors, editors, publishers, and copy-bdys from the printing office. From nine to twelve he wrote, and at noon he breakfasted on two boiled eggs, bread, and water. From one to six he was at work again. At feix he. dined. From seven to eight he received callers, and at eight went to bed. This spell of intensity would last from six to eight weeks, during which he would write or read incessantly. Then he would rest, sleep, and eat, take long walks in city and country, regain his wonted vigour, and mingle again in society until another writing spell seized him. As to his extravagant use of coffee as a stimulant, Balzac wrote : "I have discovered a horrible and cruel system which I recommend only to men of viy our, with heavy black hair, a complexion of ochre and vermilion, solid hands, and legs like the balusters of Place Louis XV. I speak of the use of coffee, ground, distilled, cold, anhydrous (a chemical term signifying with little or no water), taken fasting. Thi3 coffee drops into the stomach, which, as you know from Brillat-Savarin, is a bag of velvety interior upholstered with papillae and capillaries ; finding nothing, it attacks this velvety and voluptuous lining ; it becomes a sort of nourishment, demanding juices ; it wrings, it compels them like a pythoness adjuring her god ; it maltreats those soft wallß as a wagoner abuses his young horses. The nexuses inflame, they blaze and send their sparks up to the brain. Then, all at once, everything stirs. Ideas move like battalions of an army on tho eve of battle, and the battle begins. Memories charge with banners displayed ; the light horse of comparisons deploys in a superb gallop; 4 logic brings up its artillery with cartridge boxes and -train; witticisms come as sharp-shooters ; figures of rhetoric take form ; the paper is covered with ink, for the watch begins and ends in torrents of black liquid as does tho battle in its black ammunition." Theophile Gautier told how Balzac "used to preach to us a strango literary hygiene. We ought to shut ourselves up for two or three years, drink water, eat soaked beans, like Protogenes, go to bed at 6 o'clock in the evening and work till morning . . . and, especially, never speak, to a woman. Balzac insisted greatly upon this last recommendation, very rigorous for a young man of twenty-four or twenty-five years of age. According to him, abstinence from ladies' society developed the powers of tho mind to the highest degree, and gave to those who piactised it unknown faculties. We timidly objected that the greatest geniuses indulged in the lovo passion, and we quoted illustrious names. Balzac shook his head and re-" plied 'They would have done much more but for the women.' The only concession he would" make us, regretfully, was to see the loved one half-an-hour a year. Love letters he allowed. They formed a writer's style." _ , Balzac's publisher declared that his real work of compobition hardly commenced until he had before him a galley of proofs. His first copy, scribbled with a crow's quill, was a mere sketch ; tind the sketch itself was a sort of Chinese puzzle, largely composed of scratched out and interpolated sentences — passages and chapters being moved about in a curious chasse-croise, which the type-setterß deciphered and arranged as best they would. Margins and intercolumnal spaces they found covered with' interpolations ; a long trailing line indicated the way hero and the way there to the destination of tho inserted , passages. A cobweb was regular in ! comparison to the task the printers had to tackle in the hope of findinc beginning, middle, and end. In the various ' presses where Balzac's books were set up, the employeeb would never work more than an honr at a time on his | manuscript. , It is likely that the legend is half true. A # LITERARY NAPOLEON. Balzac a3 author is grandiose, is grand, is even great. As a man he was even greater. Gozlan tells how on Engi li3h girl, in a restaurant, was so astonished at his conversation that she refused to charsro him for his macaroni. Balzac, not to be outdone, presented tho English girl with a novel of Fenimore Cooper's that he was carrying — regretlint; that it was not a book of his own. To receive a spontaneous tribute of macaroni, from an English girl, is surely evidence of Napoleonic rank. Balzac, Indeed, regarded himself as a literary-

Napoleon. "What he failed to achieve with the sword, I will achieve with the pen," he scrawled across the Emperor's portrait. Balzac was the most romantic of realists ; the most realistic of romantic writers. His work is far from uniform in quality or style ; but he literallypoured his life into it, and the best of it still lives with his astonishing vitality. As a novelist, he is to France what Shakespeare as a dramatist is to England — the creator of a hundred types of human life and character, passionately embodied in language. Dear Bookfellow, — Your article on Tom Bracken sent me to an old scrapbook where I found this clipping, which may bo news to some of your younger generation. The date is 1883. — Maori Hill. One of the most popular men in New Zealand is undoubtedly Thomas Bracken, member for Dunedin Central, the most important electoral district in th© colony. Thomas first mounted the ladder of fame about fifteen years ago, when he carried off the first prize offered by the Dunedin Caledonian Society for the best poem on "Porridge." Every Caledonian in Otago who could spell, and hundreds who could only scratch their heads, went into training for this competition, and caused an immediate and disastrous rise in the price of oatmeal. When it was known that the prize was awarded to Tom Bracken — a young Irishman, a digger and sheepshearer from Australia — great was the grief and consternation in Dunedin, and many a burgoo banquet was turned into gall and bitterness in consequence. But the worst was to come. Next year the .Scotchmen offered another prize, and Thomas calmly walked away with that also. The same thing happened year after year, until at last it got so monotonous and exasperating that no less than three score and ten blasted barda of Caledonian origin had cast themselves into the bay in sheer desperation at their repeated defeats, and had well nigh ruined the navigation of the- port by the accumulation of theirremains in the channel. For a long time scarcely a vessel crossed the bar without getting entangled in the grisly skeleton of some departed poet, which frequently penetrated the ship's side and stretched forth a long and bony arm in the direction of the whi&ky barrels stowed away in the hold. Things came to such a pass that the society had to give up the prize poem business altogether, as no Scotchman had tho ghost of a, show of winning against this tuneful rhyme-slinging Irishman. Thomas just knew a great deal too much about Caledonia stern and wild, and he could rhyme a whole clan or congregation of Caledonians into their graves as easy as wink; so that there was no ueo whp.i-over in prolonging the hopeless struggle. No matter what the subject might be, whether "Braxy" or "Brose" or "Glenlivet" or "Cauld Kail Het Again," Thomas smilingly took up a, poetic attitude outside a jorum of toddy, drew a mantle of Otago mist about his shoulders, sniffed up the caller air of tho mountains, and then for your life you couldn't say whether it was the spirit of Bobbie Burns, Wattie Scott, or the Ettrick Shepherd, or all three mixed together, that made you jump in the air, cry "hooch," and snap your fingers as you listened to the soul-stirring pibroch of verse that poured a cataract of Cale donian harmony in your ears, and woke th» echoes ot the colonial hills with its melodious and long resounding refrain. After this claim was worked out, Mr. Bracken published a small volume of poems, entitled "Behind the Tomb" (whoso tomb not specified), in which he threshed the creeds of Christendom into smithereens, and wept "bekase" there were no more creeds to conquer. The newspaper critics, who are always poor and pious, of course came down on him for this. One of these gentlemen said that Thomas had surely mistaken, his vocation — the book showed that Nature evidently intended him for a saw-grinder ! But Bracken was not to be put down. He started a newspaper of his own in Dunedin, called the Saturday Advertiser, which soon became one of the most popular weekly journals in the colony, and attaiiied a large circulation. Therein his poems, tales, and sketches were published week by week, and then started to go the round of the New Zealand press, from the Bluff to the Bay of Islands. , At the last election for the House of Representatives, Bracken was returned for Dunedin Central, defeating Mr. E. B. Cargill and several older and more experienced men. Some day, not far distant, we hope to see Thomas a Minister of the colony. In the meantime, under the nora de plume of Paddy Murphy, he contributes yearly more genuine fun and amusement to the readers of the New Zealand press than all the other humorists and representatives of the colony put together could supply in a century if they were stall fed on Joo Miller all the time.