LITERARY NOTES

Evening Post, Volume XCVII, Issue 103, 3 May 1919, Page 16

LITERARY NOTES

Bode Cottage, the scene of George Eliot's novel and the original home of "Adam Bod«>" situated an. Bomtpn. Cpuiinouj Derbyshire sr.as. ressjijiy. apl^

By auction for £535. , The cottage still has the building attached which formed the workshop of Adam and Seth Bede. ■

Mr. Churchill's celebrated Dardanelles "gamble" was more than justified, according to Mr. Morgenthau, who was United States Ambassador in Constantinople, and was in daily touch with the Turkish and German officials. On the 16th March, 1915, two days before the "second bom"bardment by the Allied Mediterranean squadron, Mr. Morgenthau visited the Bfcraifs and the two celebrated forts Hamidie and Kilid-ul-Eahr. Mr. Morgenthau asserts, on the authority of General Merfcens, the chief technical officer of the Straits, that had the British fleet returned on the 19th, the day after the bombardment of the 18th, it would have silenced the two. forts in a few Hours, as they had come to the end of their ammunition, Hamidie having only seventeen armour-piercing shells left, and Kilid-ul-Bahr "precisely ten" shells 1

According to , "Little Bird" in- The Gentlewoman, fewer books were published in England in 1918 than in many previous years, works of fiction being reduced .by 523.'

This is a critical hour in the life of the Chitrch of England, truly says the Rev. Oliver Chase Quick in » little book "The Testing of Church Principles," just published by John Murray. ' In its pages the author examines the fundamentals of authority and reform ; but in this second respect is careful to plead that particular reforms in the Church should be undertaken no longer as concessions to popufar demands or as means of reaching a modus ■ vivendi between antagonistic parties, but as steps towards a clearly apprehended and coherent ideal of what English churchmanship ought to stand for.

A new edition of "Tom Brown's Schooldays," edited by an assistant master at Rugby, is about to appear. This classic was originally published in April, 1857, and almost 9000. copies were disposed of before the end of the year. It reached its sixth edition in the following year. It is singular (observes a writer in the' Westminster Gazette) to reflect that the book very nearly came to a premature end. While Hughes was engaged on it his children were struck down by scarlet fever, and the death of his eldest girl so prostrated him that for a time he had not the heart to go on. Happily, Hughes regained courage and carried on the work to its conclusion.

"One of the disquieting phenomena of the present day is that the cast of bookmen is disappearing, and that their place is being taken by demagogues with a sense of the street-corner, but without any sense of the universe. I will not defend the idolatry of books; it is as sacrilegious as any other form of idolatry. At the same time one may reasonably contend that the statesman who has no base of literature to which he can retire for rest and entertainment is more likely than the disciple of great authors to run amuck on a career of experiment, ■without knowledge, and adventure without principle."—Sixl E. T. Cook, in Literary Recreations.

Miss Meriel Buchanan, daughter of the late British Ambassador to Russia, in "The City of Trouble," writes : "The Russian, I believe, lives in a world of loneliness peopled only by ideas. ■ Hitj impulses towards self-confeesion, towards brotherhood, towards vice, , towards cynicism, towards his belief in God and his scorn of Him, come out of this world ; and beyond it ho sees his fellow-men as trees walking, and the mountain of God as a distant peak, placed there only to emphasise his irony."

■Among the books which the George H. Doran Company, New York, has just published is "Shaking "Hands with England," by .Charles Hanson Towne, editor of M'Olure's Magazine. Mi*. Towne was a member of the first party of American editors who went to England in the summer of 1918 for the purpose of strengthening the bond between the Mother Country and the one-time colonies. He'was presented to the King and Queen, and also met President Poincare.

A charming little incident has taken place in Dr. Johnson's house, Goughsquaro. A party of sailors visited the Mecca and they gob a' coloured member of the party tc read aloud from the famous dictionary. He did so in excellent style. An inquiry revealed the fact that he was a native of Jamaica. All lovers of Johnson will remember it was Francis Barber, of Jamaica, who was the doctor's faithful servant, to whom he left a handsome bequest. And BaTber once went to sea. The coincidence of a Jamaican sailor reading aloud the dictionary m the old house was certainly curious.