LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIII, Issue 10133, 16 May 1896, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

A great discovery of manuscripts by the two Wesleys has just been made. The accidental opening of an old volume brought to light » number of prose writings and poems by Charles and John Wesley. It seams that it was Mr?. Oliphant.who invented the name "Thrums," and used it in one of her early novels. Mr. Barrie reinvented it in total ignorance of his predecessor's book. At least so says the American Bookman..

Messrs. Macmillan and Co. have in the press for early publication," Ulster as it is: or, Twenty-eight Years' Experience as an Irish Editor," by Mr. Thomas Macknight, the author of a " Life of Bolingbroke," and other historical works. \

It is stated that the projected biography of Alexander Russell of the Scotsman still hangs fire. Mr. J. M. Barrie essayed the task six years ago, and was forced to relinquish it before he had well begun. Sheriff Campbell Smith, of Dundee, was then urged to undertake the work ; bub it seoms doubtful whether he will be any more successful. Somo of the risks attending illustrations in daily newspapers, where the work of making-up has to bedono in the small hours of the morning, are illustrated by what befell a Chicago paper recently, when a picture of- the labe Cardinal Manning was labelled "Frau Kriiger, wife of Oom Paul," and accompanied with an entertaining sketch of that excellent lady, while in another place a picture of Mrs. Kriiger, looking grand and intensely Dutchy, bore the legend, " Cardinal Manning." The long-expected "People's Bible History," for which Mr. Gladstone has writteu a general introduction covering some thirty pages, will be published in a handsome volume by Messrs. Sampson Low. The Rev. George C. Loriiner, LLD., of Boston, has edited the " History," which has been prepared \in the light of recent investigations by some of the foremost thinkers in Europe and America. A tine stool portrait of Mr. Gladstone—reproduced from a photograph specially supplied by appears as frontispiece to the volume, which is also copiously illustrated from the masterpieces of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Dore, and other famous artists. The publishers also purpose issuing the work in twelve monthly pares.

Cardiff is to be congratulated on possessing a public library body whose enterprisehas enriched the town with a most im portant and valuable collection of ancient Welsh manuscripts. The collection is of a varied character, and contains such a store of material for tbo Welsh historian as might never have been brought together again. Learning that tho Welsh MSS. of the Philipps' collection were purchasable, Mr. John Ballinger, the Cardiff chief librarian, to whose assiduity and professional knowledgo the acquisition is due, visited Cheltenham, accompanied by Professor Powel, of the University College of South Wales and Monmouthshire, and from the report of those gentlomen the Freo Library Committee decided on taking action, with the above result.

A letter from Charlei Dickens to Wilkie Collins was sold for £50, at Sotheby's, the other day. It was writteu on January 25, 1864, and refers especially to the death of Thackeray:—" You will have heard about poor Thackeray's death—sudden, and yet not sudden—for he had been alarmingly ill; at the solicitation of Mr. Smith and some of his friends I have done what I would have most gladly excused myself from doing, if I felt I could, written a couple of pages about him in what was > his own magazine. Therein I have tried, so far as I could, with his mother and children before me, to avoid the fulsome and injudicious hash that has been written about him in the papers, and delicately to suggest the truo points in his oharactor as a literary man that ever has for the literary cause. Happily, I suppose, you can havo no idea of the vile stuff that has been writton; the writers particularly dwelling on his being a 'gentleman,' ' a great gentleman,' and the liko, as if the rest of us were of the tinker tribe; and also on his wonderful gift of putting all people and all companies at their ease, at their perfect repose, enjoyment and genial ease, which is as much as if they should praise mo for not living with my wife—of course, the natural result is that everybody else begins to disparage the poor fellow, and people who would have enslavered him living begin to bespatter him dead."