MAX O'RELL.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume XX, Issue 2346, 7 February 1893, Page 2

MAX O'RELL.

Respecting Max O'Rell.who is advertised to leotnre at Hawera on the 14th instant, the Wellington Post says:— Of all the celebrities that the " much- travelled " Mr. R. S. Smytbe has brought to us— beooming himself celebrated and rendering public service in the process — none have been more successful sinca setting foot in Australasia than M. Paul Blouet, better known by his norn de plume of •' Max O'Bell." And this success is only a reflex of that met with elsewhere. Neither is it surprising, for anyone who has read, which virtually means everyone wbo reads, those delightful books with the now familiar Franco-Hibernian signature on the title page, must at once desire to see and hear their author. Hence it was regarded as a matter of course when a crowded and unusually representative house greeted the first lecture of the Wellington season. As with bis first book — the book which suddenly made him famous — the subject was "John Bull." Prom the opening sentence the entertainer had bis audience with him, and salvos of applauae followed him off the stage at the close. A tall, well-knit man of commanding figure and military bearing, wearing a short, oropped moustache and pince-nez, be unites to a voice which is pitched in a key and of a quality that lends itself to every degree of inflection and dry humour, an extremely mobile countenance, and the power of conveying in a smile, a shrug, a gesture, a queer movement of that neat prehensile moustache, whole volumes of mirthful suggestion or ironioal meaning which send the audience into convulsions. Especially is be a master of the anti-olimax. A story is told, in itself h amorous, and the audience laughs. Bat the end is not yet. As soon as there is a lull in the caohination, the narrator inter* jects perhaps two words more with indescribable emphasis, and hearing those words, and seeing that eloquent accompanying gesture, the audience fairly explodes. Like a lightning flash they penetrate into every nook and cranny of that anecdote, lighting it up, giving to it a fresh significance and a new philosophy. And this man, who has amused two hemispheres and delighted the whole EnglishBpeaking race, is certainly a philosopher, but with the spirit of the age his philosophy is double-distilled to subtle essences, and administered in pillules. There is as much true philosophy in one of his crisp and sen* fcentious sentenoeg §j in the bulky tome of a more sombre sage. Readers of his books do not need to be told this, and his lectures are bis books condensed, vitalised, and given new shades of meaning by the personality, vivacity, and dramatic power of their author. The people smile, the Bmile' deepens, and then there comes tbe anti-climax and explosion. But they do not laugh dnly — they think. It is & humour whiob leaves " a taste i' tbe mouth." Beneath tbe sugar-coating ot comicality there is the pillale of thought. It is as though the search-light of truth, playfully directed, had suddenly illumined and thrown into relief come national peculiarity, which had hitherto been taken as a matter of course, but the incongruity of which is now seen for the first time. If the operator prefers the flash-light of wit and tbe rapier-thru6t of' irony to tbe sledge-hammer of invective and the missile of abuse, bis work is the more deft and effective therefor. Take, for instance, the manner in which * c treated that most notable weakness 01 Englishmen— their calm assumption of all that is good in the Empire, and relegation to other component races of all that is bad— the manner in which he told how whenever a

Welshman, or a Scotchman, or an Irish* man succeeded, he was at once referred to in England as "the English, author," " the English inventor," " the English state*, man," or "the Engliah explorer," bnl let him fall away from grace and commit some crime, or even the crime of failure, and he at once became •• the Welsh burglar," "the Scottish murderer," or "the Irish ruffian." The truth of tbe picture, and the semi.pathetio allusion to " English " Channel, went home to everyone present. To sum tip, M. BlouSt unites in bis own person the comedian, the thinker, the teacher, the humourist, the keen observer, and the man of tbe; world, and possesses, moreover, the rare faculty of impelling this complex person. ality across the footlights. Trolj, a man eminently suited to be the guide, philoi. opfaer, and friend of the English-speaking race. , "•