BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14310, 2 March 1907, Page 4

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

In an. interesting little volume just published by Messrs Whitcombo and Tombs, the Rev H. J. Fletcher tells the Hincmoa legend in Maori, and adds notes and a vocabulary designed to assist European readers. The author explains that his idea is to assist those who are anxious to learn something of the Maori language. Various books already published offer the reader an opportunity to pick up a few sentences ot Maori, but a text-book, with a vocabulary and explanatory notes, should meet the wishes of those who desire to go a little further. Even the person quite ignorant of Maori can follow the story by constant reference to the vocabulary, and in doing so cannot fail to acquire an insight into the Native language of New Zealand. Mr Fletcher’s volume should be appreciated by many New Zealanders.

“ Perhaps the most radical characteristic of the present-day literary attitude is its willingness to look at things from the other follow’s point of view/’ suggests a' writer in “Everybody’s Magazine.” “ This is the germ of Kipling’s magic. He has even tried to let us peer from the edge of the jungle through the eyes of the tiger. This characteristic pervades the whole spectrum of local colour, energizes the entire range of genre studies, and is the ultimate basis alike in the filigree of Henry James’s delicate deductions and in the green goods of Thompson Seton’s ‘ natural history.’ Naturally, the tendency manifests itself also outside of fiction and in readers as well as in writers. It explains the instant demand roused by the series of ‘ true ’ biographies, and it adds a strong psymatio interest of autobiographical miscellanies.”

The announcement that the German Governor of Samoa has been authorised from Berlin to acquire Robert Louis Stevenson's famous house, Vailima, as an official residence, is an instance of the curious incidents time brings in its train. Stevenson was one of the ablest and moat active opponents of German supremacy in Samoa. He openly aided and abetted Mataafa, the Samoan rebel chief, who gave the Germans much trouble, and on one occasion almost annihilated a German force. Stevenson did not live to witness the last of the late Lord Salisbury’s international deals, under which Great Britain retired from Samoa and consented to the division of the Pacific archipelago between Germany and the United States in return for concessions elsewhere. That deal would have found its most keen critic in the “ Tusitala ” of the Samoan natives. ef Vailima,” Stevenson’s last home, occupies a hi!l-top overlooking the harbour of Apia, the Samoan capital. Many friends and admirers of the novelist will be sorry if it should become a German Government House—the very last thing that Stevenson would have wished it to be.

The vogue of Dickens is ever on the increase, and has now completely outstripped that of the two novelists who a generation ago shared his popularity. Thackeray is still popular, but Lytton is scarcely read, and it Is very doubtful whether his popularity will ever revive. It is interesting to compare the number of reprints''of these three Victorians which have been issued of recent years. In “The English CataLogue of Books ” for the five years ending in 1905 the name of Dickens fills over eight columns. This is only surpassed by Shakespeare, who has fourteen. Thackeray fills four, but Lytton only about half a column. This is a go,od rough test of the estimation in which the three novelists are held today.

“The Coming American Monarchy ” is the title of Mark Twain’s reminiscences in the January number of the “North American Review.” In them ho vents his humour on the American’s well-known worship of titles and money. “ Human nature being what it is,” he says, “I suppose we must expect to drift into monarchy by-and-by. It is a saddening thought, 'but we cannot change our nature; w© are all alike, we are human beings; and in our blood and bone, and ineradicable, we carry the seeds out of which monarchies and aristocracies are grown; worship of gauds, titles, distinctions, power. W© have to worship these things and their possessors; we are all born so, and w© cannot help it. Wo have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. -In America w© manifest this in fell the ancient and customary ways. In public wo scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, hut privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance wo buy them for cash and a daughter. Sometimes wo get a good man and worth the price ; hut we are ready to take him any way, whether he bo ripe or rotten, whether lie be clean and decent, or merely a basket of noble and sacred: and longdescended offal. And when we get him the whole nation publicly chaffs and scoffs--and privately envies; and also is proud of the honour which has been conferred upon us.- IVc run over our list of titled purchSases every now and then in the newspapers, and. discuss them and caress them, and are thankful and hap|>y.”

Dealing with Australian literature “ The Bookfeliow ” protests against the idea that Australian literature cannot be great until it has found a path not previously" trod. “Wo cannot do that,” states the Sydney weekly. “ Our fa tilers, the glorious Elizabethans and the rest, stole the whole visible stock of brooms, and we can’t create brooms any more than they could. The Melbourne Catullus cannot pen two lines before the ghost of the Roman one arises to say ‘That’s mine!’—and the Homer of Scrubby Gully uo sooner sends in his epic to ‘ The Town and Country Journal ’ than the editor tells him wearily to give us something fresh instead of repeating Hid same stale old yarn. In those circumstances Australian. literature is a very creditable thing, whatever it is. We are sorry it has been born so subsequently, but there is no remedy for that, unless a way is devised to make effective Wilfred Denver’s petition in ‘ The Silver King’: ‘Rub hack the universe, and give me yesterday.’ The best thing to do in the melancholy circumstances is to apply the old tricks to this elderly young country. Our pets probably toll their mistresses any more than Horace told Lydia, but they can make it dear that Lydia’s name is Mary Ann, and that she lives at Cow Flat. Thus poetry will be re-created for the generation of Mary Ann and the country of Cow Flat. Our prose ns can repeat the old stories in their new environment—which is all that the age and Australia demand. Novelty is the charm of literature, variety is the spice of art, and one casual allusion to the wattle blossom stamps a book as Australian and no other.