MACMLLAN'S MAGAZINE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9220, 24 November 1888, Page 1 (Supplement)

MACMLLAN'S MAGAZINE.

The October issue of this magazine continues the interesting story of "Cressy," by Bret Harte. "The Saville Letters" contains a running narrative, with extracts from the letters of George Saville, Marquis of Halifax, the famous "Trimmer." Perhaps the most generally-interesting article of the number is John Brown, the antislavery agitator, who perished at Harper's Ferry, but whose life and active labours had a <*reat effect in leading up to the final abolition of slavery. An article entitled " Shakspere Unawares" shows how the language and phraseology of the ''re;it dramatist has become incorporated into all our everyday talk. The following is an example of a phrase which we daresay many imagine to be a coinage of yesterday : — In "A Winter's Tale," the clown, on the shepherd's suggestion that they may live to shed many more "gentleman-like tears," breaks in with, "Ay, or else 'twere hard hick, being in so preposterous estate as we are." How many or these colloquialisms Shakspere invented, and how many were in common use in his day, it is impossible to say. The article concludes :— "To a certain collection of some four-and-thirty dramas, now nearly three centuries old, may be traced a large proportion—far larger than is popularly imagined or realised— our favourite and most idiomatic phraseology." "On a Tennessee Newspaper" is the comic article of the number. It is on the well-worn theme of the troubles a young man got into who undertook the temporary editorship of an American newspaper. A great religions Catherine at Ceylon is described in an article entitled "A Modern Pilgrimage." The rest of the contents are up to the usual i mark.