LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12401, 24 October 1903, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

With the unpretentious title of "Cities" Messrs. Dent will shortly publish a newbook by Mr. Arthur Symons, being studies in the souls and temperaments of those cities—Rome, Seville, .Constantinople, Belgrade, among others—which have most deeply attracted or impressed the author in his wanderings about Europe. Mr. Symons has been at.work upon the book during the last en years, and fragments have appeared from time to time in the magazines. Eight photogravures from paintings and engravings of the towns described will be included in the volume.

Mr. .William Watson, who entered his forty-sixth year a-few days since, has for some time been suffering from an affection of the eyes, and is at present under the care of a well-known occulist at Bristol. The "Ode on the Coronation of King" Edward V 11. , -' published in June, 1902, is the last prose communication to the press. Alluding to Mr. Swinburne's sonnet regarding an incident of the Boer war Mr. Watson wrote: — '".Let us remember that the existence of a great theme not less certainly than of a great poet is one of the indispensable antecedent conditions of great poetry.''

The autumn season in England promises to be very rich in biographical books. Canon, Ainger's " G'rabbe" should be out soon. Sir George Douglas is busy with, his- " Life of General Watichope." Mr. T. F. Henderson, Mr. Henley's colleague, is engaged on a short biography of Burns, and Mr. A. C. Benson is writing on Tennyson. Among, other biographies announced are: " Nero,' by B. W. Henderson; "'Galileo," by J. J. Fa hie'; "Canning," by W. A. Phillips; "Lord Chatham," by A. S. McDowell; " Nova lis," by Una Birch ; " St. Francis of Assisi," by A. M. Stoddart; arid "S. J. Stone" (hymn-writer), by F. G. Eilerton.

To young authors who asked his advice. Stevenson wrote encouragingly if they had stuff in them; if they had none, he wrote nothing., Autograph hunters received 1 his name written on a card; this he called "penny plain." But those who were polite and assiduous enough to enclose an addressed envelope and a Snmoan stamp received a card bearing a sentiment or a verse. These hs called "Twopence coloured." A verse would run: I know not if I wish to please, 1 know not if I may; I only scrabble at my ease To pass a rainy day.

Shortly Mr. George Allen will issue, in the library edition of Buskin's works now iu course of publication, the second volume of " Modern Painters.' The Seven Lamps of Architecture" was issued in September, to be followed by the three volumes of " The Stones of Venice" in November, December, unci January, and then the remaining volumes of " Modern Painters',' will be issued. It will be remembered that the third volume of " Modern Painters" did not appear until ten years after the second, and the foregoing order of publication has been adopted with the view to avoiding delay while the diaries, note-books, and manuscripts of this decade (1846-1856) are being dealt with.

It will be very gratifying intelligence to Mr. George Meredith's numerous admirers to learn that the distinguished novelist is again fairly well. He has given a special reputation to Boxhill, and his residence there has this summer attracted a good many visitors to that charming locality. Mr. Meredith's modest house is almost buried in flowers, as is the famous chalet that stands on a plateau on the highest- portion of his garden. The chalet, which contains two rooms—a sleeping apartment and the novelist's library—has not been utilised by its owner for some *imc past. Seated in his garden not long since, and conversing with a friend, allusion was made to some compliments that had been paid him on his work, when Meredith pointed to the steep hillside crowned by a tall belt of trees. "There is no great difference in the height of the trees," he remarked. "Ido my work ; you do yours. We may all be equally successful in our own way.

There are degrees of excellence among picture forgers as among artists, and Mr. Ronald Graham, -who writes in the Strand Magazine on forgers and their methods, deals ■with imitators who seem, judging by the reproductions of their work, to be but clumsy and inapt craftsmen. Mr. Ronald Graham, it appears, recently made the acquaintance of a " M. Adolphe," a gentleman who was for years engaged in the sham Old Master business, but is now a reformed character. The method of M. Adolphe and that of his school (for there were several in the business) was to copy a figure from one picture, a head from a second, the background from a third, and so forth, and then to fuse this jumble into a Titian, a Murillo, or whatever was required. That the elements wore sometimes rather conflicting seems to have been immaterial, for one of the works reproduced and composed of Paul Potter, Cuyp, and Corot is described as a " forged Paul Potter or Corot," two artists wide as the poles asunder in subject, treatment, colouring, and everything else.

( Mr. C. K. Chesterton, writing in (lie Critic, gives the following animadversions on the "hero" up-to-date.:'— Since Thackeray, there has come into fashion a fiction, of which some of the French and Russian novelists are able exemplars, of which Mr. George Gissing is not innocent, a school which appears positively to despise the young man whom it calls'hero. It has not for him even that dark and stormy kindliness which one sinner may have for another. At every point the hera'is sacrificed to the author, as much as a dog to a vivisecticuist; he goes through the ugliest antics of humiliation and meanness, that the author may parade his precious insight and candour"; the one must be a cad that the other may be a prig. The story of the young man in fiction has travelled' all this strange distance. It begins with the primitive bard, straining his voice and almost breaking his lyre in order to utter the greatest of youth and the greatness of masculinity; it ends with the novelist looking at both of them with a magnifying-glass. It begins with a delight in things above, and ends with the delight in things below us. I for one have little doubt about their relative value. For if a man can say, "I like to find something greater than myself," he may be a fool or a madman, but he has the essential. But if a man says, "I like to find something smaller than myself," there is only one adequate —"You couldn't."

It was only to be expected that Sir James Crichton Browne would issue a rejoinder to Froude's "My Relations with Carlyle" in the Carlyle contoversy, which is raging in literary circles at Home. This has duly appeared under the title of " The Neraises of Froude." It is useless to regret the appearance of this volume. The publication of Fronde's* posthumous apologia made it inevitable; and it will serve a useful purpose. It is true the work traverses ground already well covered, that there is nothing vitally new in it, but it places before vhe public in manageable form the facts, knowledge of which is necessary to a just estimate of Froude's "Reply." That more is done must be admitted, and penhapg regretted ; but this is a side issue affecting the general credibility of Froude's writings" With this at the moment we can have no concern. The main object, of the book before us is to prove that Froude believed a myth and betrayed his trust, and that, as a result, he must take the place of the man he so unmercifully pilloried. That aim has been achieved. It is shown once more, and conclusively, that Froude's authority for the worst of his allegations was the word of Miss Dewsbury, of whom both Mrs. Carlyle and her husband took a proper valuation. The air is cleared. The question of Froude's motives, and the dispute over pecuniary rights will doubtless lead to further heated discussion, but of the domestic life of the Carlyles it may surely be hoped that the last word has been said, and there is satisfaction in the hope that this unhappy controversy may have a beneficial effect in j the long run on our biographical literature.