ABOUT BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 10339, 12 June 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

ABOUT BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Our London correspondent, writing under date April'l6, says : Quite an eruption of Australian novels broke out on the bookstalls last weekend;' including Mr George Ranken's ' Windabyne,' Prioe Warung's < Stories ofAfce Old Regime,' and Marcus Clarke's ' Stories- of Australia.' The latter, though familiar enough to you," are fresh to English readers. I confess I don't think they in any way enhance the reputation of the author of*' His NaturaV Life.' But then I am amongst those who; consider the Australian idolatry of this novelist altogether overdone. His one book is a good novel in a way, no doubt. With such material to bis hand it was bound to be. The fact is, of course, Marcus Clarkestruck a patch of extraordinary richness in those old Tasmanian records. That he tnrned them to account, as Kipling or Guy Boothby or even Boldrewood would have done, his most ardent supporters daren't assert. Messrs Maomillan inform me that the following novels will be added forthwith to their Colonial Library :—'Master Beggars,' by L. Cope Gornford; ' The Career of Candida,' by George Paston ; • The Philanderers,' by A. E. W. Mason; ' Captain Kidd's Millions,' by Alan ©soar; ' A Tale of Two Tunnels,' by W. Clark? Russell; • The Way of Life,' by Mrs Oliphant; 'My Run Home,' by Rolf Boldrewood; " The Seoret of St. Florel,' by John Berwiok; and ' The Fall of a Star,' by Sir W. Magnay. Some very strong statements'have been made in the 'Chronicle' regarding the circulation of pirated editions of popular novels, etc., in the colonies. Mr Marston (of Sampson Low), questioned on the subject, declared:

x There never was a time when American pirated editions did not And their way into all the British colonies. In particular they have latterly gone into Australia in a very wholesale way, and in a very impudent way. The Customs officials at colonial ports are furnished with lists of all copyright books, and by aid of this list they are supposed to examine each case of books and to stop such as contain works evidently unauthorised. Some of the colonial Customs officials do their duty in this respect with commendable careOthers decline to trouble themselves, and indeed favor such piracies. I may give you one remarkable instance which will show how very necessary it is that the Publishers' Association, by combined action, should take energetic measures to protect the interests of all copyright owners, authors, or publishers. An active young friend of mine, who has just been appointed by the Publishers' Association agent for South and West Australia, found a bootmaker advertising some 10,000 piratical editions at sixEence a copy, or gratis to every buyer of a pair of oots. These were promptly seized, condemned, and burnt. Three cases were also seized in Fremantle and others in Perth. The importers in those parts have been alarmed, and there will be no more business of the kind done there for years to come.

'Mr Blake of Newmarket' is a racing novel of considerable merit belonging rather to the school of Major Hawley Smart than to that of our prolifio but somewhat slipslop friend Nat Gould. The plot does not amount to much, simply detailing the melancholy circumstances under which Reggie Blake squanders a very respectable fortune in betting and gambling. Of course a rasoally trainer and jockey figure amongst the dramatis personal, and we have eaailyrecoguiaed portraits of most of the turf celebrities of tc-day. It is, however, I think, a pity to have indicated the personality of John Leslie, the head of the jockey ring, so clearly and offensively. After ten years' punishment bygones ought to be bygones. 'Mr Blake of Newmarket' is published by Heinemann at the reasonable price of 3* 6d. Mr H. G. Wells, the clever author of ' The Time Machine' .and ' The Wonderful VisiD,' was the guest of the evening at the New Vagabonds' Club on Wednesday, and made a capita! speech, in the course of which he classified reviewers in quite a fresh fashion. After describing authors as " seedlings," Mr Wells divided' reviewers info various families—slug reviewers, who prty on the first tender leaves of authors, bird leviewers, who peck here and there and possibly do damage; heavy reviewers, who ciush with their feet whole bod of shoots. Mr Wells went on to complain of their methods of irrigation. Some reviewers, he said, so copiously drench the plants witn the water of fhttery as to rot them at the roots; others withhold water until the plants are dried up. Iu addition there is, of course, the wise, farseeing horticulturist, but he is not very common.

Besides some interesting recollections 6f Frederick Denison Maurice by Sir Edward Stranhey and Sir Walter Bigmt's appeal for a " Victoria Day," the April ' Cornhill' contains two short stories which ought not to be ovet looked. '' The Patriot's Progress' is a racily-told tale of an Irish election by Stephen Gwyun. ' Morrant's Half Sovereign ; takes us back to school, aud shows how West's comrades elected he should °e treated when the crime of stealing their money in order to help a poor washerwoman was brought home to him. Mr Eden Phillpotts nanatcs this experience, - and does it rather well, but one canuot agree with his denouement. .The Maurice recollections contain few yarns worth reproducing, though Sir E. Sirachey declares his subject liked a gcod story, and could tell it with epigrammatic .point:—" For example how a work, of which the original tide was ' The Soul and Its Aspirations,' had been found in the library of an eminent professor at Cambridge with the title altered to ' The Soul and Its Stomach-aches.' How another professor, in conversation with Coleridge, used the word Nature in a way which roused Coleridge to exclaim ' Why do you say Nature when you mean God V Oo I)r Baokland answering : ' I think it mere reverent, but you think both words have the same meaning, do you not ?' Coleridge indignantly rejoined : ' I think God and Nature the same! I think Nature is the Devil in a strait waistcoat.' Maurice told Sir Edward Strachey a storey of himself. He stopped in the street at Leamington to remonstrate with a costertnonger who was belaboring his donkey with all his might, whereupon the man replied, with a quite plaintive appeal, " Why is he so stupid, then?" Mr John Davidson's style lays him specially open to caricature, but "he has' seldom been more felicitously parodied than in the 'Ballad of a Debauchee' in the current number of' Sketch.' The author must, I think, be Mr Owen Ssaman. . Space will not permit me to quote more than a verse or two, but they will suffice to show how amusingly the youDg man burlesques Mr Davidson's new morality moods and his weakness for rearranging the world on Davidsonian principles. As for the Dabauchee: He walked through life a thing of sneers—- " A very handsome youth," they said; Like flowers he plucked the dusied years, AH as they fled., He knew the world and worldly ways, All husbands shook before his tread; He heard the tongue of female praise. And wagged his classic, stately head. He knew alPvtces, and his eye Was spared with every wanton sin; He reveltedlri the merry lie, And took the very poets in. The moon doused her Chinese lamp the night he died,Af»b.->the stars greeted him to a mightyithrofie; The "Saint" ensconced there was the Emperor Nero. They took him next to a wondrous hall where a, Chair of State a Titan bore: " What Martyr"—thus the youth aloud—- " This more than Heavenly Pomp denotes ?'' " Peace," sighed the Angels as they bowed, " You see before you Titus Oates." They drew him to a Palace vast. With gorgeous greens and yellows gay; Its air was gracious as the past And sweet as Everlasting May. The youth stood speechless. Entered God, And glanced around with modest pride ; " For you," He said, with smile and nod, " I built this Shanty ere you died."

Dr Robertson Nicoll, the editor of the 'Bookman' and the 'British Weekly,'and the discoverer of J. M. Barrle and "lan Maolaren," is about to be married somewhat late in life to Miss Charlotte Pollard., daughter of a Hertfordshire magnate. Mr Clement Shorter, referring to the imSending event in the 'lllustrated London Tews,' says:*— "Dr Nicoll's many aco«n< plishmente have steadily impressed themselves npon the English public since he came to London from Soolland some ten years ago to edit the 'Expositor ' for Messrs Hodder and Stoughton. He has net only kept up, the great; traditions of that publication, but in founding the 'British Weekly,' the 'Bookman,' and the ' Woman at Home' he has skilfully adapted himself to the requirements of: widely different olasses of readers. Apart from these journals some of the most notable

orittotsmt <tf otwifWSV h<kv*«ome from hit pin. What bVhas done. ft»* many living writer* the iratograph; °°JJi<Ht °* *•**'* lttoo ' tß ithhja fiowejgiga patf snfftpgsjjfc witons. Mr<, to J4T*Margare* OgHvf | f to whom the-Stat Thrums sketches were sent ■ r . Clement Scott in his sorapy little book of o|*Ho.tting>, christened the 'Wheelof Life,' ha* a chapter on '■ Stage Fights;' in thecoursftof which he tells of ao SkwardagoideotWhich befell our mutual He say^i— jar (l witae|«fdone stage ibofaenfi «JPhat was fcbi Jitttnigpof ' Michael Str_Qgnft , ..At. the AMpy.wheSCtarre* Warner tfelfflylSat his Uffi-'by ofetobh>g4lfc6h« unblonted dagger worn by painful scene. Five minutes before the ourtain fell on the last aot we saw that something had happened. The blood was falling from Warner's band in torrents, and the plucky aotor was getting paler and paler under his "make-up," and swaying to and fro in evident agony. But, like all nervous, excitable, and sensitive men, Warner is 'a good plucked one.' When the curtain fell the actor fell also in a dead swoon from pato and loss of blood. It was a miracle that the popular actor did not die that night. It'was tduoh and go,. But happily his life was spared-; and the grim reminder of the aooident is a stiff joint of -the middle finger on the. left hand. He has never been able to bend the knuokle sinoe." The following story from, the same source is also new to me, and may be to you:—" I remember Tom Robertson telling me a story of the kind that actually happened at Gremorne, or some public gardens of that pattern. -Two acrobats, who were sworn friends, were accustomed to make a slight ascent from the ground outside the oar of a balloon. When some hundreds of yards from the ground, the one swinging by the other's hands, they used to scramble back into the oar. One night -just before the i asoent the aorobat who held the other by the j hands discovered in a dark corner of the ground his friend kissing the elder aorobat's wife. Boiling with indignation he did not' say one Word, but slunk sileutly away/ The iascent was made as usual, and when a hundred yards from the ground the elder acrobat, who had the life of the younger one literally in his hands, taunted him with his perfidy. ' Yon kissed my wife, did you ? Then down you go.' ' For God's sake, Jim, have mercy.' '2*o ! no ! down you go.' He released' his hands, and down went the younger aorobat with a dull thud, stone dead amongst the appalled dancers. Verdict: " Accidental death!" No. one but the guilty woman knew the true secret of that awful tragedy in real life."

M. Drumont published a book entitled *Mon Vieux Paris,' in the preface of which ho observes that a "profound change has come over our France, which has been invaded -by cosmopolitans, in the midst of whom we, the natives, will soon be foreigners." "The exhibitions have completed the work of 1870. The German has taken possession of our oapital. As in 1870, he has ootije in four army corps—Sonopenbauer philosophers, financial robbers, musicians, and beer-sellers. The great restaur.mtf, the celebrated cafes which had a legecd,.a tradition, the cafds where one could converse, have given place to immense loudly decorated German beer saloons. Germanised and sluggish Paris has not secured material prosperity by this denial of what was itself. The entire world, which formerly paid us tribute, is now doing without us. Who can be astonished thereat t "