ABOUT BOOKS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CV, Issue 12421, 9 February 1901, Page 9

ABOUT BOOKS.

The Life and Death of - Richard Yea-and-Nay. By Maurice Hewlett. (Macmillan’s Colonial Library; Christchurch, Whitcombe and lembs.) The unfamiliar designation adopted by Mr Maurice Hewlett for the Lion-hearted King is not the author's own invention. It was in reality, as in the novel, Bertram d : e Barn that fastened this name to the Count of Poictou, as he found agiickhame for every other prominent man- of his hay , '‘The* name 1 give him,” Mr Hewlett makes Bertram say ro Berengers o the Frozen'Heart, daughter cfSaaoho of bpa-m, ‘•-is Yea-and-Nny; beware of it. Ho is ever of two minds; Let hear! and cold flaming* heart -and chrked head, -tie will be for God and the enemy will expect heaven and tamper with ie . With rage he Will go up, laughing come down; He will he for you and against vou; eager, slow; a wooer, a'seorner; a singer of madrigals, ah, and a croaker aiteiwards. There is no stability m him neither length -of love nor c.f hate, no bottom, 1 It is something to have Richard -depicted as a man and ,nob as a mere figure m history, and this attempt of Mr Hewlett s to realise the life of Cceur-de-Lion was worth making. Scott, of course, sing out the man of action for his hero., and Mr Hewlett’s romance would have been tne better if there-had been more action anil less love-making. One can hardly think of Richard as the lover of one maiden; history credits him with so many attain of the heart that it comes as a shock to find 'him, in this stc-ry, keeping’faith with Jehane of the Fair Girdle. It be interesting to know' where Mr Hewlett found historical evidence of the _ existence c-f Jehane de Saint-Pol, but, having found her or created her, perhaps he -did well to make Richard live and die for hex. It may not be history, but it is good- fiction. Admirers of “The Forest Lovers will naturally seize on this latest novel with avidity, but the style which delighted them once has run riot here. Too often the meaning is obscure, and not infrequently the formal grammar is weak. But if the sty.e has lost some’ of its freshness, the charming sentiment and fancy of the author are as happy and as acceptable as ever.

“ Modern Broods,” by Charlotte M. Yonge. (Macmillan’s Colonial Library ); Christchurch: Simpson and!.Williams. ■ There is suprising freshness about this lost story of Miss Yonge’s.' It is slight in plot perhaps, but as smooth in style and as interesting in matter as any of t e novels since “ The Heir of Redclyne. u Modem Broods ” is a story for girls, and about girls, a study of the boarding school and high school days of a young family with a sympathetic and lovable, though misunderstood, elder sister to add the necessary touch -olf pathos. There is plenty of the love interest, too, in which Miss Yonge delights. On its more serious side the novel makes more than a passing reference to modern -educational .methods, and Miss Yonge strongly condemns, by implication, the practice of turning girls away from school with the merest superficial knowledge of essentials.

“Rue with a Difference, by Rosa N. Carey. (Macmillan’s Colonial Library); Chnstchurch . Whitcombe and Tombs, Did Miss Carey ever write a dozen pages without a kiss or a hug, of one soul looking into another, or some other absurdity. “Rue with a Difference” is flabby and sentimental, so much so that one turns from it to writers of the Guy Boothby type with genuine relief. There is not one smart saying in all Miss Carey’s pages, and although' smartness is not everything tne average reader, fed on Miss Fowler and Miss Corelli, can hardly be expected to endure commonplace people and commonplace love making to such an extent as this. An epigram would be like an oasis in the desert, so smooth and unexciting is _ the story. Miss Carey’s style is 'sometimes described as,“restful;” and so it is. But dullness is unpardonable in this age.

The interest in Buckland’s “Curiosities of Natural History” is perennial, but something more than the excellence of the work must have urged Messrs Macmillan and Co. to issue the present reprint (4 vols., Whitcombe and Tombs). It was in 1857 that these amusing and instructive notes concerning animals dead and alive were first collected and published, and since then there have bpen some twenty editions. There was a time when every popular lecture on „natural history was brightened by anecdotes or illustrations drawn from the “Curiosities,” and hundreds of enthusiastic amateur collectors and' naturalists owe their love/ of nature to Buckland’s chatty notes.

Admirers of’ “John Oliver Hobbes” sometimes ask themselves what was the origin of this nom de guerre, It was first used in the Pseudonym Library over a little study story “ Some Emotions and a Moral.” The remembrance of the publisher of this library is that'Mrs Craigie simply turned about for a good, sensible sort of signature, and that the quest led her to “John Oliver Hobbes.” No doubt many folks still know their author by it only, for the details of fame are not universal knowledge, and there are some who like the novels better because of the homely name adopted by the author. Mrs Craigie, by the way, has fallen, like so many of her contemporaries, into the clutches of the cheap publisher. The latest of her novels to be issued in the sixpenny edition is the simple and admirable little story of “The Herb-moon.” Sir George Newnes is the publisher and Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs send a copy.

Mr John Murray, who speaks from a long personal and family knowledge of literature and its business aspect (writes Mr W. P. James), told the authors assembled at the Authors’ Club to do him honour, that those who sought after the potentiality of wealth beyond the dreams of avarice must not appeal to the great heart of the public or to the great head of the public, but to the great stomach of the public, because it was in pills, or beer," or perhaps soda-water, that, wealth lay, and not usually in the realm, of literature. Sir Walter Besant once said (and it may be that the phrase lingered in Mr Murray’s memory) that with the present mutitude of English, American and colonial readers anyone who should strike the public taste as Dicken’s struck it would achieve wealth beyond the dreams of brewers’ vats. The instances of wealth achieved in late years by smaller men, with smaller successes, have been enough to justify Sir Walter’s proposition, and M‘r,Murray’s statement must be received with this qualification. Nevertheless, his advice to the authors was absolutely sound. Wealth may come to the man who pursues literature. But if the object of the man’s pursuit be wealth, he should direct his energies, not to literature, but to pills, or soap, or beer, or popular periodicals.

Sir Lewis Morris, who has been wintering at Penhryn, in South Wales, has recently published a new volume of verse, entitled “Harvest Tide.” It includes the ode written at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria. Mr Kipling’s latest Anglo-Indian tale “Kini” is running serially in “Cassell’s.” Mr Irving Bacheller, a new’ American novelist, is said to have achieved a marvellous success with “Eben Holding,” a study of American country life. The authorship of “ The Englishwoman’s Love Letters,” Avhich has made so great a stir in the Old Country, is still mystifying the London critics and literary writers.