LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 10419, 17 April 1897, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

Mr. Elliot Stock is about to publish " The Huia's Homeland, and Other Verses," by " Roslyn." A large proportion of tho pieces are founded on life in New Zealand, tho country which gives the title to the volume. The third volume of Mr. Walter Scott's edition of the works of Robert Browning, edited, with an appreciation of the poet, by Miss E. Dixon, and containing "Sordello" and a number of the miscellaneous poems, is almost ready for publication. Mr. Quaritch is going to publish, on behalf of tho Plainsong and Mediieval Music Society, some specimens of " Early English Harmony from the Tenth to the Fifteenbh Century." Profes.«or Wooldridge is editing the work, which will include nearly all the English music that exists to the end of the fourteenth century. Part 11. of the eighteenth volume of tho " Transactions of the Royal Society of Literature" contains the lecture delivered by Professor P. Max Miiller on "Coincidences," read before the Society last May. The thesis sought to be provod is that long before the Aryan Separation there was actual intercourse between East and West. Evidence of this the Professor adduces from similarities gleaned from folk-lore, mythology, and language. Uγ. Naneen's forthcoming work, which is entailing a good deal of overtime to the printers engaged in its production, will consist of two volumes. As the Arctic explorer dictates to his two assistants in Norwegian, the corrections on the proof-sheets after the work of translation is accomplished are necessarily more than ordinarily heavy. Ib is expected, however, that the English edition will be ready about the time Dr. Naneen begins tho series of lectures ho has engaged to deliver in England. Under tho title of "British Moralists,"Mr. L. A. Selbyßigge has prepared for publication by the Clarendon Press, in two volumes, a series of selections from writers principally of the eighteenth century. Among the moralists represented are Shaftsbury, Hutcheson, Butler, Adam Smith, Bontham, Samuel Clarke, Balguy, and Richard Price; and extracts are given from Hobbes, Locke, Cudworth, Wollaston, Brown, J. Clarke, Paley, and others. The editor contributes an introduction and an analytical index.

Who shall say that poetry is a drug in the market? Mr. Stead has with the arrival of the new year been taking stock of eoine of his enterprises, and finds that up to date he has printed no fewer than five million copies of his "Penny Poets." There is, therefore, good ground for his claim that ho circulated more poetry of the first class in the twelve months during which the " Penny Poets" were running than had ever been circulated by any publisher in the English language. Few persons are perhaps aware of the large number of paruphloh the late Mr. William Morris wrote. We note that Mr. Frank Boilings, of Great Turnstile, Hoiborn, has succeeded in cataloguing nearly thirty of them, and these, of course, do not exhaust the list. From the same catalogue —which is, by the way, very neatly got up —we see that tho Kelmscott "Chaucer," which took about three years to go through the press, and the copies of which were all subscribed for, at least, eighteen months before publication, is now valued at £2810s. Even remembering that the book is ornamented with some sixty pictures designed by Sir Edward Burne-Jones, and engraved on wood, and that there are beautiful borders and ornaments by Mr. Morris himself, this seems a tolerably long price. Messrs. Downey and Co. announce the publication of a new and copyright edition of Lever's novels in thirty-six volumes. During his last visit to England, Charles Lever intended to revise his novel' (with the aid of his daughter, Mrs. Neville), a task which was interrupted by hie death. The text throughout is now being most carefully seen to. The publishers have secured the original plates, six hundred in number, etched by "Phil, 1, and George Cruikshank for the first edition. In addition, several of the later volumes are illustrated with wood engravings by Mr. Luke Fildes and other artists, all of which will be included in this edition. A few of the volumes were originally published without) illustrations, and {or these arrangements have been made under which Mr. Gordon Brown* will conribufrt a Hries of illuakritiou.