LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8472, 24 January 1891, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

Mils. Oliphant's long-promised volume, "Royal Edinburgh: her Saints, Kings, Prophets, and Poets," will be published immediately by Messrs. Longman. Messrs. Griffith, Far ran, and Co. are about issue a biography of Isaac; Pitman, the inventor of phonography, by Mr. Thomas Allen Reed, illustrated with woodcuts and facsimiles.

Mrs. Humphry Ward is busily at work finishing her new book. Its motif will be the aspirations of a workingman after culture. Mrs. Ward is said to have gained some hints from the life of Robert Chambers.

Mr. A. H. Bullen is bringing to an end his notable scries of lyrical anthologies with an edition of Davison's "Poetical Rhapsody," It will be issued in two volumes, uniform with Mr. Ballon's well-known " Lyrics from Elizabethan Song-Books" and "England's Helicon."

The poems of Dante G. Rossofcti will shortly be published in a cheaper form than they have ever yob assumed. The volume will contain the whole of the original poems, such as they appear in the "Collected Works," issued at the end of ISStj, but not any of the translations, nor yet of the prose. The Luxembourg, which has for some time been overcrowded, is at length to be enlarged. A new gallery, twenty metres long, is to bo erected along the Rue de Vaugirard detached from the main building. Three sides of a square will thus be formed, into the court of which so formed the sculpture will eventually lie removed. The first number of the " Critical Review of Theological and Philosophical Literature," edited by Professor Salmond, D.D., will be issued shortly. It. will contain contributions by Canon Driver, Professors A. P.. Druce, A. 13. Davidson, and Marcus Dods, Dr. Walter Smith, the Revs. George Adam Smith and Vernon Bartlett. Mr. A. Taylor Lines, &c.

Sir Richard Burton had nob made much progress in his translation of the "Golden Ass of Apuleius. At the time of his death he had practically completed a metrical translation of Catullus, and was engaged on a similar version of Juvenal anil Ausonius, proposing to follow these with the Greek Anthology and other works. In these translations Mr. J. Morton was associated with Sir Richard, and the first instalment from the Latin is now being issued by private subscription. The editor of an American magazine of some prominence asked Mr. William Waldorf Astor to write a story, for which he was prepared to pay at the rate of two-pence-halfpenny per word. There were to bo about 12,000 word'. The millionaire accepted the offer, and expressed his intention of devoting the payment to some worthy object. He thinks more of writing than he does of his enormous fortune, and is now travelling in Europe with the purpose of collecting material for a new novel. Miss Charlotte Mary Yonge, who many years ago became justly celebrated by the publication of her line story "The Heir of Rcdclyffe," finds, it seems, no exemption from work in her sixty seven active years, but is busily engaged on her one hundred and first book, which is to be entitled "The Two Penniless I'lin cesses," a story of the time of James I. of Scotland, It will appear in two volumes with the imprint of Messrs. Macmillan and Co.

The advantages light reading have found a champion in the Dean of Worcester. Distributing the prizes at the Leamington High-street School for Girls, Dr. Gott is reported to have said that " boys and girls who gob heavy reading needed something lighter, and he believed that in England we had the purest and brightest light reading that had ever been given to any age or any country. He contended that light literature would in a material sense change the world in which we live, and it opened up a new and better world for us."

The late William Blades left almost ready for press the MS. of a work to which he gave the title of " The Pentateuch of Printing," and which will, in all probability, be published this year by his executors. It deals with the subject of the typographic art in a light vein, somewhat after the stylo of the author's " Enemies of Books," and naturally begins with the genesis of the craft. A number of engravings for it had been prepared prior to his death, and it was intended to make of the work a tasteful quarto volume of some one hundred and fifty to two hundred pages. Mr. David Stotbwill publish immediately as a further contribution to his " Masterpieces of Foreign Authors," a new edition of Thomas ('arlyle's translation of " Wilhelm Meister," in two volumes. In addition to an introduction by Prof. Edward Dowden, the book will contain a number of notes, a ■scarce portrait of Goethe, and a view of his house at Weimar. The value of the edition will be still further enhanced by the insertion of two selections from Mr. Edward Bell's translations of Goethe's revised edition of the " Wanderjahre;" and the conclusion of the " Man of Fifty and yard's Address."

The object of the " Dictionary of Political Economy," which Mr. K. H. Palgrave is editing, is to give a statement of the position of political economy at the present time, together with such references to history, law, and commerce as may be of use. Articles on the main subjects usually dealt with in the works of economic writers will be found in it. Short notices of deceased economists, and of their chief contributions to economic literature, are also included. A list of works of leading living writers will be given at the end of the work. Bibliographical notices will likewise be added to. the more important articles, with the titles and dates of publication of the principal books referred to.

When England ceased to transport her convicts to New South Wales, Van Dieman's Land, and Western Australia, a horde of ticket-of-leave men, escaped convicts, and ruffians of every kind betook themselves to the South Sea Islands. Fiji and Tahiti harboured many of them until these islands came under settled government, when the convicts fled. A large number find refuge to-day in the Samoa or Navigators' Islands, where they are known as "beachcombers." Messrs.' Cassell and Co. publish a story entitled " Lost in Samoa," by Mr. E." S. Ellis (with illustrations by Gordon Browne), in which the beach-combers play a chief part. The story is of a kind to please romantic boys, full of adventure and fighting, shipwrecks, and buried treasure, and all thab is dear to juvenile imagination.