BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXIII, Issue 13712, 1 April 1905, Page 10

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

“ A Daughter of Jael,” by Lady Alice Ridley (Longman’s Colonial Library),.as a problem novel with a somewhat novel theme. It treats of a young girl who, for reasons that seem to her amply sufficient, deliberately murders a bod-ridden old man. She is not discovered, and her crime produces all the benefits to others and to herself, that she , anticipated. She has, however, to face life with the dreadful memory. of what she has done, to mentally re-enact the crime when her clean-souled lover is wooing her, and later when her children are playing at her knee, to carry always with her the haunting, secret that cannot be forgotten or shared. The readers are left to decide according to their individual ideas , whether it is possible for the woman ever to atone and stand once more conscience free amongst;her fellows. It is a moot point whether novels of this kind can be said to furnish particularly healthy reading, but they have received the endorsement of some bf the most widely read novelists, and “A Daughter of Jael” has at' least the merit of being carefully and pleasantly written. The gloom of its subject is not made unduly prominent, and its characters are drawn in a manner that strikes a note of reality as well as of interest.

The n Edinburgh Review ” has published a particularly interesting article on the new' light thrown on the Odyssey by M. Victor Berard. This gentlemini has been following the route of Odysseus round the Mediterranean in a sailing ship, and ho has vei’ified the geography of the poem in a remarkable manner- He. suggests , that the itinerary ivas actually founded on the records of ancient Phoenician pilots. The London “Times,” not content with introducing radical change-into ■ its ordinary advertising columns, is now attempting to teach publishers their business. “ Why should not the publishers themselves tell the public what their books contain?” it asks. A bright, inTeresting resume of its contents, presented in the right maunei, is the most natural and the iposb effective means of selling a book. • • More, too, might be done in the direction of providing illustrations of tasteful bindings, portraits of authors, and so on. Everywhere we see the endeavour to make advertisements inteiesting. The advertisements of publishers can be rendered the most interesting and the most successful of all. In a. book dealing with his adventures in Uganda, Mr J. F. Cunningham gives some interesting information togardino- the Protectorate and its people. Some Of the native-customs appear to be curious. One tribe has tAe custom of forbidding the mention of the name of any dead person. it this name happens to be a common noun, such as “lion, or a numeral, as “ nine,” some other word has to be coined to fill the gap created. ihe result is "that students of the language are in constant Mr Cunningham quotes a. curious instance ot that beset a paternal govern meat. Vnrious causes contnbuuocl to raise the price of wives; the result was a disinclination to marriage among the people, who. av ® guished for energy. Then the Govcin meat steps in and fixes the pnee at a uniform figure of 13s 4d Whatever a girl’s beauty or accomplishments, no more than the legal sum may be paid a distinct discouragement to female education.

The visit of Messrs Torrey and Alexander, the American “revivalists, to London has produced some efforts from the representatives oh the daily newspapers. One writer delivered himself as follows: The Soul—what is it? Oh, you polished elegapets of London, hedonists fmd dilettantes, cosmonolitan sippers of sifted delight, bibbers of rare poetry -and prose, tasters of art and music, dabblers in the 'ast cries of science, what is the soul. Despise this man, if you will, termer at his rasping dialect, his husky, Wesrernisms, his crude phrasing, his oosourantist biases. But ..down in your depths are you not afraid of yourselves? In some sort have not we too, wo' also, souls to save, our own and others? '■From what? Well, from divers kinds of death. It is into the myriad supple insincerities of London that this hoarse voice crashes with a primitive challenge like the challenge of love or death. It is the eterpalcry of driven humanity; the deathless yearning of man the insatiate, the insatiable, the questioner, the pursuer. The complaint has been many times made that English-speaking people will nob make proper use ot tlio splendid libraries that have been placed at their disposal. They insist upon devouring huge quantities of trashy novels instead of reading instructive works. It seems that in this matter, as in many others, they might well take a lesson from the Japanese. During 1903, of the books called for at the Imperial Library of Japan, 166,677 vol-. : nines, Qi* 21.6 per cent, jolated to mathematics, science and medicine, 153,711, or 20 per cent, to literature and language; theology and religion, 12,486, or 1.6 per cent; while 18 per cent of the applications were for books on history and geography. Fiction finds no place in the classified tabic of books in demand by readers of this Japanese" library. In a recent article Miss Ellon Thorneycroft Fowler (Mrs Felkin) discusses the problem of whether an author is responsible for the sayings and doings of his characters. “I maintain, she writes, “ that a writer is not responsible for anything that appears in his books in the form of dialogue. His object is to make his characters speak according to their kind—to say what would be natural for such peopio acting in such circumstances.” In short, the author must be “ an actor throwing himself heart and soul into the part which he has undertaken to play.” ‘But, on the other hand, Mrs Felkin holds that an author is responsible for what he says in narrative- Ho is bound to see that his philosophy is the best of its kind, that he has in stock. • • ■ ’

The “Saturday Review publishes the, following verses from an unfinished drama by Mr William Watson: — “ Hope, the great explorer, Love whom none can hind, Youth that looks before her, Age that looks -behind, ■ Joy with brow, like Summer's, Care with wintry , pate, ■ Masquers are and' mummers \ At. Life’s gate. Pow’r .with, narrow forehead, . -Wealth with niggard, palm, - ■, Wisdom old, whose hoar head Vaunts a barren calm;,' . Haughty overcomers, " ’ In their pomp and state: Masquers all and mummers ' At Death’s gate! ” In England, at any rate, Charles Dickens has not fallen into neglect. In January (says the “ Athenaeum ”) over 200,000 of Dickens’s books were sold in England, and “ The Dickens Fellowship,” which has now more than 0000 is publishing a new, magazine, “The Dickensian,” which is to be devoted solely to the novelist and bis works.