LITERATURE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLII, Issue 12818, 18 March 1905, Page 4 (Supplement)

LITERATURE AND ART.

Mr. Elkin Matthews is issuing a volume by Mr. A. E. Gallatin on "Whistler's Art Dicta and Other Essays."

New novels by Mine. Albanesi, Mrs. Mary E. Mann, and the lato Miss Adeline Servant are announced by Messrs'. Hurst and Blackett.

Miss Marie Corelli's last novel, " God's Good Man," is now selling in the 128 th thousand. Her "Temporal Power" has sold 150,000 copies, and her " Master Christian" 165.000 copies.

Mrs. Gertrude Atherton, who is at present in California, lias a volume of short stories appearing with Messrs. Macmillan. It takes its title from the first one, " The Bell in the Fog."

Lord Rosebery has written to the Rev. Hinchcliffe Iliggins concerning his new edition of Dr. Johnson's Prayers and Meditations" : "I think it a charming book. I have bought several copies."

Messrs. Ncwnes make the interesting announcement of a sixpenny edition of Mr. Henry Seton Mcrriman's novel, "The Sowers," which, as may be remembered, is not without its bearing on recent events in Russia.

Another novel by Robert Barr is now issued by Messrs. Methuen. It is a breezy, humorous romance of an over-rich girl with a craze for titled personages, and it is fittingly entitled "The Tempestuous Petticoat."

Hitherto we have known Nova Hopper, who is Mrs. Hugh L'hesson, as a writer of verse and phantasies. She has now written a novel of contemporary life, which Mr. Werner Laurie will publish, under the title, "The Bell and the Arrow." The scene of the story is an English cathedral city, but the characters include an Irishman.

Dean Butcher, of Cairo, who is already the author of one historical novel, has finished another. It is entitled "The Oriflamme in Egypt," and it deals with the Crusade of Louis the Ninth. Other characters in it besides himself and his devoted Queen Margaret an the English William Longsword, Matthew Paris, and Robert de Sorbonne.

An interesting experiment is to be made with two of Mr. William Morris' poems. They are to be issued by Messrs. Longmans for the use of schools and colleges. One is "The Man Born to be King," from "The Earthly Paradise," the other "The Glittering Plain." Both volumes contain a biographical sketch of Mr. Morris by Mr. Maekail. and also notes.

Maxim Gorki, the great Russian writer of short stories and novels, is of democratic origin. He is still only '37 years of age; itis only 11 years since his first book appeared. He himself, as a newspaper correspondent writes, was in turn a shoemaker's apprentice, a scullery hand on a steamer, a baker, a chorister in a. travelling opera troupe, a street apple seller, a lawyer's clerk, and a railway porter.

It may be remembered that Mr. E. J. Sullivan made an interesting series of drawings for an edition of Carlyle's " Sartor Resartus." He has been asked to do a like service for Mr. IT. G. Wells' new book, "A Modern Utopia." In "Anticipations" and in "Mankind in the Making," Mr. Wells sketched out his Utopia. In his new book he describes it in being, a circumstance which invites imaginative drawing's.

Two novels which differ greatly in their setting are appearing with Messrs. Hutchinson. One is by Mr. G. B. Rurgin, entitled " The Marble City," and refers to Canada. Mr. Burgin is familiar with the Dominion and its life, and before now has successfully written of them. The other book is Mr. Andre Castaigne's novel of art-student life in Paris, *' Fata Morgana." The author is well known in the art world of both France and America.

Some thirty odd years' ago Carlyle wrote: —'' That noble, patient, deep, and solid Germany should be at length welded into a nation and become Queen of the Continent, instead of vapouring, vainglorious, gesticulating, quarrelsome, restless, and over-sen-sitive France, seems to me the liopefullest public fact that lias occurred in my time." Germany has become better known since the!), and of the two nations we should not to-day say that it is France that is vainglorious, or restless, or quarrelsome."

Miss fteraldine Brooks is the. author of a hook, "Dames and Daughters of the French Court," which Mr. Fisher Unwin is to publish. It consists of glimpses of women who made the Court of France famous, as. for example, Mesdauies de Sevigne, de Reninsat, Reeamier, de la Fayette, Le Bran, and Roland. Miss Brooks lias chosen the most natural, attractive and lovable women associated with French Court life, and she deals especially with their inner Hies, the private joys and sorrows which lay beneath the outer glitter of salmis and social triumphs.

Miss Beetbam-Kdwards is engaged upon a Suffolk story which, like its predecessors, will deal with the rural life of her childhood, a condition of things no less completely swept away than that of the ancient regime in Frame. The heroine is a village schoolmistress, paid at the rale of £15 a year, her school house an appendage of the church, and us much, under clerical control as the churchyard Itself. One of the scenes described is that of the "stone-picking gang," a kind of indentured child labour abolished through the efforts of the late Henry Fawcett.

It lues been suggested (says Walter Jerrold, in the Academy) that Gorky's grim writings would nevei have made a mark among English readers had he elected to write under his own name, Alexei Maximovitch Peslikov, and if the suggestion be trite it shows that there is much in a name after all. For the information of readers who wish for some acquaintance with Gorky's writings the following is a, list of English translations which have been published :—" The Orloff Couple and Maha" (1901); "Foma Gordyeef" (1901). "The Outcasts and Other Stories" (1902), "Three of Them" (1902), "Twenty-six Men and a Girl" (1902).

"The Mask"' is the title of Mr. William Lo- Queux's latest novel. It is a London mystery, that of a nun known as Rupert Munro, He taken the character of a priest in some private theatricals, is disconcerted afterwards to find that his own clothes have disappeared and walks home ill his clerical finery. Someone prevails on him to make a sick call, and there a dying man confides a letter to him which is the key to a mystery. All sorts of adventures crowd upon him, and they all beai more or less, as tho letter does, upon the fate of a girl whom fate (and the author) have thrown in his way. In the end they many, as heroes and heroines always do in well regulated novels like those of Mr. Lc Quetixl

This is the centenary year of the death of Schiller, and the fact may be recalled that Burns and Schiller were born in the same year—l7s9—the one in January, the other in November. Carlyle made this observation when communicating with Goethe concerning the translation into German of his " Life of Schiller," and boldly remarked: — "We English, especially we "Scotch, love Burns more than any other poet for a hundred years." Goethe was disposed to encourage this love, but, while accepting Carlyle's elevation of Burns to a like starry height with Schiller, he recognised also that the two constellations belonged to wholly different hemispheres. Although Schiller survived Burns by nine years, there is no extant evidence that any of the ploughman's songs or poems had reached the author of " alienstein"- at Jena or Weimar..