LITERARY NOTES.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 71, 23 March 1912, Page 19

LITERARY NOTES.

[From the latest English, Australian, and American papers and reviews we have taken the following items.] Lord Haldaue writes a preface to the biography of his friend James Hutchison Stirling, which Mr. Fisher Unwin is about to publish. He speaks of Stirling, as "a man of genius, rugged, and uncontrollable, vet genius, that could not be mistaken for anythiag lees. 1 ' Of Stirling's greatest work, "The Secret of Hegel," he says : — "The book embodies a result which is likely to be enduring. It will hardly be superseded, for it has the quality of the Work of genius. Along the road it has travelled one cannot g_et any further." The biographer is Miss Hutchison Stirling. A book of sport experiences in Vancouver and Newfoundland is announced by Chapman and Hall. The writer k Sir John Rogers, a good sportsman, who enjoyed his sojourn in tho regions mentioned. His book has enthusiasm, without which a narrative of sport may be "tame ajnd domestic" to the reader. It also has illustrations, as every book of the sort should have. Of "The Long Hand," by Sir William Magnay, Bart. (Stanley Paul and Company, London), a critic writes: — Historical warfare, beauty in distress, and gallant, adventuring Englishman have formed the theme for many a novel ; and although Sir William Magnay's ingredients are no novelty he. mixes them well, and serves up a good tale of romantic adventure. He has set his scene in Bavaria, at the close of the eighteenth century, when Benjamin Thompson, as a count, for a time presided over the destinies of that country. The strife of the French and Austrian armies, added to a private feud,i into which an error of identity draws the hero, gives plenty of scope for adventure, of which the writer makes full use. Philip Jtayward is an attractive knight-errant, and Una yon Arnburg has sufficient beauty and charm to win protection from most men. There is a delightful picture in the Century Magazine of an erudite ermine examining critically a royal person dressed m the ermine's, skin, and this leads him to the following reflections j — "Said an envious, erudite ermine: 'There's one thing I cannot determine; When a man wears my coat, ,H«'s a person of note, While I'm but a species of vermin !' '* "The world-renowned Danish author and literary critic, Dr. Georges Brandea, 'in hnorary member of the meet prominent British and other societies of literature and science, has just celebrated his beventieth birthday," says the Telegraph's Copenhagen correspondent, writing early last month. "Amongst his many literary works may be particularly mentioned his great book' on Shakespeare. The author's birthday is being celebrated by his friends and admirers all over the world. Amongst many letters and telegrams from Great Britain there is one from. representatives) of literature, science, and , act, signed by about four hundred well-known people, including Lord Rosebery 1 and the Rectors of Edinburgh and Glasgow Universities, Sir William Tiirnar, and Sir Donald Al'Allister. As a writer of fiction, the founder of th& Legion of Frontiersmen, Mr. FogerPocock, is "sure" at home in the Far West. His latest demonstration of this undoubted fact is called "Jesse of Cariboo," _and bears the imprint of the house of Murray. . It is a- famous yam (says a Home reviewer) and the man who cannot thoroughly enjoy it should consult his doctor — or the nearest Sandow exercise specialist — for there ; must be something wrong with him ; hemust be ailing badly. Women, too, will like the book, especially young women, Covers of hockey, girl guides, and all the wholesome outdoor family of both sexes. "Say" — as Jesse would put it — this book will just delight scouts and scoutmastere. It is a real live Western joniance, yet as realistic and modern in ton© and fibre as to-morrow's newspaper. We can heartily and without any re* servation whatever recommend this story. There is a good story that G. B. S. is fond of telling, though the point is somewhat against himself, or, rather, it would be more correct to say his political views. Mr. Shaw was walking with his mother in Regent-street when an "immaculately attired gentleman, raising his hat, passed with a courtly bow that would have exalted a Spanish cavalier. "Who is that, George V said Mrs. Shaw. "Oh, that is Mr. Cunningham© Graham, the well-known Socialist," replied G. B. S. "Really! I thought he was a gentleman 1" was the naive rejoinder. Mr. Fisher Unwin has just published an anthology of "Cowboy Song 6," edited by Mr. John A. Lomax and collected from all over the cowboy lands of North America. The quality of the collection is its first-hand genuineness. Here are not verses about cowboy life by come professional writer, but the actual songs sung by the "boys" round their camp fires, as taken down from their own lips. The result is that the book gives a strangely vivid ' and interesting picture of many phases of life in the Wild West. Rough though the songs may be, the xeader will recognise at once that they are expressions of real feelings. Baroness Orczy promises us a romance of the seventeenth century, "Fire in Stubble," through Methuen. The same firm announces a French romance of the time of Louis XIV., by Miss Marjorie Bowen, "The Quest of Glory." Beatrice Harraden, the author of "Ships That Pass in the Night," who has written nothing for several years, has finished a new novel, which will be puhlished simultaneously in England and in America. A new novel by Henryk Sienkiewiez, "Through the Desert, a Romance of the Time oi the Mahdi," has just been brought out. The author of "Quo Vadis" writes in new vein a story of adventure against a background of the African desert. Black and White, the illustrated weekly of London, has been suppressed by the Sphere. _ Mr. Shorter, editor of the latter publication, calls it absorption, but gop« on to say that none of the features of Black ano White will bo I adopted. There ia at least (6ays a writer j in 'Lho Argonaut) melancholy interest in j t'le "cwan-song" of one of the staff of the journal which has been extinguished in which he pays a tribute to the magazine for having clung, "in its pathetic, ,jentleman-!iko, cha) actcristic way, to i roae and rtspectability. It has «tuck,'* ( he continues, "in the face of the cult of the semi-nuJo to its old principles. It has turned its face sternly against the blatant rhorua girl and tier imitative sister, who finds it a little dull to 6it, fully dressed, in Burke. It has doclined to truckle to the prurient-minded Liy publishing photographs taken in Paris of Leu Poets I'lostiques, of La Belle This and La Belle T'other. And so, to the very real eoifrow of a small body of admirers, it pnsses o.way." Hd goPo on to remaik that the episode does not piove that the British public will but only that which caters altogether to flippancj, but shows ihn-t the people' who put their money behind pivpeie belie\e that il does.