LITERARY NOTES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LVII, Issue 6534, 4 February 1882, Page 6

LITERARY NOTES.

Mr Whittier declares that every year he receives no fewer than 200 request* for hie autograph. The fourth thousand of Mr Morley’s “Life of Oobden’’ is now in the press. To this reprint is added an index. Mr Robert Browning has a new volume of “ Dramatic Idyls ’’ in hand. The Academy believes it will be ready early in the year. Professor Max Muller’s lectures “ On the Origin and Growth of Religion jn India” are being translated into Sanskrit by Mr Malabari.

A people’s edition of Sir Theodore Martin’s “Life of the Prince Consort” will be published in London in five volumes, at the low price of sixpence each. A new daily newspaper was to appear in St Petersburg on the Ist-of January. It was to be of small ;eize and low price, and called the Soiett (Light.) - M. Prjevalsky, the Russian explorer, has returned to St, Petersburg from his country estate, where he has passed the summer in writing an account of his travels in China and Thibet.

The announcement comes from England (hat John Richard Green, the historian, will issne a new work during (he autumn through Macmillan and 00. Its title is “The Making of England." 1 ■ Ami Bouet, well known as a geographer and geologist, has died at Vienna at the age eighty-seven. His geographical, ethnographical and historical work on European Turkey is still a standard work. Mr Thomas Tyler will shortly publish a volume of essays on “The Philosophy of Hamlet“ Shakespeare’s Period of Gloom;" “ Shakespeare’s Reconciliation with the World;’’ and “Gulliver’s Last Voyage.” Mr Brayton Ives, a book amateur of Hew York, lately purchased an unusually fine old missal, containing 300 miniatures of delicate execution, for 15,000d01. The book is a small quarto, and could be carried in the pocket of a greatcoat. Mr Alma-Tadema has, it is stated, completed three pictures for next year’s Academy. The subjects are “ Antony and Cleopatra," the actor Barnay in the part of Mark Antony, and a life-size portrait of the painter’s youngest daughter. “The Book of Oddities "is the title of a book which will appear shortly by Mr William Andrews. It will contain chapters on remarkable characters, singular customs, quaint rhymes, curious epitaphs, odd showers, whimsical wills.

Mr Millais’ portrait of Lord Beaoonsfield, which was sent to the Boyal Academy by command of the Queen when only partially finished, has, since been in the artist’s hands, and is now being exhibited at Manchester by Messrs Thomas Agnew and Sons. Mrs Catharine E. Ashmead Windle, of Philadelphia, fancies she has found an allegorical undermeaning running through “ the works called Shakespeare’s,” disclosing their author to have been no other than our distinguished countryman, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam.

The Academy understands that Mr Davenport Adams has undertaken to write a Dictionary of the Drama. It is intended to take account of the theatre in English-speaking countries—that is, practically, as far as the drama is concerned, in England and America. The Clarendon Press will publish very shortly a “ Manual of Greek Historical Inscriptions, ’’ from the earliest times down to the Homan Conquest, with a general introduction and index by the Bev E. L. Hicks, of Corpus Ohristi College. The arrangement of the work is chronological. Literary work in Belgium cannot bo such wear-and-tear work as it is in England, if we may judge from an editor being in full possession of his limbs and health at the ripe age of 80, and still at his work as editor of the Moniieur Beige, having assisted on the staff at its first issue fifty years ago. His fellow oollaborateurs celebrated for him a joyful jubilee. ' , Mr Gladstone is described as showing an eager and most pathetic interest in the approaching publication of the memoirs of public men who have lived and died within the last half century. There is hardly a book of the kind which has not some reference to this most active spirit of the age. Miss Helen Taylor, the stepdaughter of John Stuart Mill, is mentioned as » woman who holds an aristocratic audience spellbound in a Duke’s drawing-room when speaking on the dignity of Labour; a woman whooommauds the breathless attention of 3000 or 4000 working men when expounding the moral obligations of capital. The Athenceum says that the volumes entitled “In and About Drury Lane, ? which Mr Bentley announces, consist of a number of theatrical papers which the la* 6 Dr Doran contributed to Temple Bar and other periodicals. They include memoirs of Kean, Macready, and 1 oung, and a good deal about French actors and actresses of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Emile Zola has finished his contributions to the Baris Figaro. They have been running for a year, and have been.devoted mainly to an exposition of the doctrine of realism. Zola believes in journalism, in which he acquired his training, and to every young writer who i consulted Him he would say: “Throw your•elf headlong into the press, just as one throw* himself into the water to learn to swim. It is the only school for a man at this day." , Among the forthcoming publications of the Cambridge University Prtss are The

Growth of English Industry and Commerce," by Professor Cunningham, U.A. j “ Aristotle’s Psychology," by Mr Edwin Wallace i “ The Olympian and Pythian Odes of Pindar” and “The Isthmian and Nemean Odes of Pindor," by Mr A. M. Fennell. “The Anabasis of Xenophon,” with a map and English notes by Mr Alfred Pretor, and “ A Treatise on the Physiology of Plants,” by Mr 8. H. Vines, are also in the press. Mr Edward A. Freeman, the historian, is at present on a visit to the United States. The newspaper men, who have been interviewing him of course, say that he has a great deal of personal magnetism, and the rhythmic richness of his voice flows along in agreeable cadences. He looks a bale, vigorous, and large-hearted Englishman, of medium height, broad-shouldered and full-ohested, with a high head and full frontal. There ie nothing of the bookworm about him. He has no intricate sentences, and seems bent on impressing a principle rather than on imparting information. Messrs Hodder and Stoughton's list of new books contains the Groat Schoolmen of the Middle Ages, by W. J. Townsend. Christ in the Christian Year, Trinity to Advent, by F. D. Huntington, D.D., Bishop of Central New York. Dr James -Morrison’s Commentary on Mark. They also announce a series of volumes under the general title of “The Clerical Library,” intended for the clergy of all denominations, with a view of furnishing them with stimulus and suggestions in all the varied departments of their work. The series will probably extend .to twelve volumes. The first will consist of three hundred outlines of Sermons on the New Testament.