BRIEF EXTRACTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12212, 6 March 1903, Page 3

BRIEF EXTRACTS.

" FATHER O'FLYNN.

Mr. Alered Perceval Graves, the author of that famous classic, " Father O'Flynn," tells an amusing story in which his song plays a prominent part. On one. occasion he was dining with a former editor of the Spectator and Lis son, and they were talking of things Irish out of deference to their distinguished guest. The conversation turned on music, and the young gentleman was bewailing the decadence of Irish songs. " You never see any songs to touch tho old folk songs now,"' he remarked vehemently, continuing, " show me a man who could write such a song as Father O'Flynn' nowadays." There was a dead silence for a moment: then his father said quietly, "The author o 1 'Father O'Flynn' is seated opposite you at this moment.

The young gentleman collapsed.—Chronicle.

It is said of Pitt that he always preferred to see and talk to the people with whom he had to do business, Mid to leave as little to writing as possible. It is this gift of his that makes Mr. Chamberlain's visit to South Africa of such momentous import.— World.

All novels, as composed by serious and didactic writers, deal more or Jess with so eial problems. But the problem novel par excellence was always concerned with a. more or less discreditable sexual relationship which gave it at once a distinctive and deplorable note. Nowadays we talk more conformably to social convention on these matters. Women who did" are not as popular as they once were.—W. L. Courtney.

Of our modern mob of gentlemen who really do write with ease and whose easy writing produces the very reverse of hard reading Sir Leslie Stephen stands perhaps at the head. What unembarrassed erudition — callida juncture of thought with thought and phrase with phrase ! "In sequent toil all forwards do contend." Sentence after sentence rolls plop into its pocket like a pool-ball at the dictation of " Doodles" in " The Claverings."—" as easy a shelling, peas" is the onlooker's phrase.— Saturday Review.

Perhaps no phrase is so terribly significant as the phrase ''killing time." There is on the earth a race of revellers who do, under all their exuberance, fundamentally regard time as an enemy. Of these were Charles 11. and the men of the Restoration. Whatever may have been their merits, and, as we have said, we think that they had merits, they can never have a place among the great representatives of the joy of life, for they belonged to those lower epicureans who kill time, as opposed to those higher epicureans who make time live.Chesterton.

One excellence of De Foe among many is his sacrifice of lesser interest to the greater because more universal. Had he (as without any improbability he might have done) given his " Robinson Crusoe" any of the turn for natural history, which" forms so striking and delightful a feature in the equally uneducated Dampier—had he made him find out qualities and uses in the before (to him) unknown plants of the island, discover a substitute for hops, for instance, or describe birds, etc. —many delightful pages and incidents might have enriched the book ; but then Crusoe would cease to be the universal representative, the person for whom every reader could substitute himself.—Coleridge.

Whereas the leading tragedians of the past have striven to pourtray the massive force of Othello, the modern school, which prefers "character acting" to tragedy, has been attracted rather by che delicate subtlety of lago. Robust declamation, the full outlines, and the majestic style of former times have now given way to the cooler triumphs of the analytical. intellect and polished keenness of style.',, If the tendency to dethrone Othello and exalt lago is to be checked this will be done by an actor who is able to apply his intellect, as distinct from his power of indicating the passions, to expressing the sublime simplicity of "the noble Macmillan's Magazine. ;' • ' _ \. '" .>