Literary Notes.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1012, 24 July 1891, Page 12

Literary Notes.

Edited by T.L.M.

•Roirtnrs of the Mail who are interested in literary eubiects and who meet with any difficulties m the study thereof, are invited to put their trouble into a question and send it to this column and an answer will be given herein cs early as convenient. As an encouragement to literary beginners the editor will faiily and honestly criticise any writings sent to him for that purpose and snort contributions iroin readers will be welcomed for publication. Publishers and booltsellers are invited to send books and publications of general intend notice in this column, thereby enabling country readers to to be in touch with the latest works in 1? Address all communications for this column to Ttoe Literary Editor, New Zealand Maid. ANSWERS TO QUERIES. Can you tell me where to find the followincr quotations :—1- * Like angels visits. 2. ‘ The rift within the lute.’ 3. ‘ Cleanliness is nest to godliness.’ — Enquirer. The first-named quotation is taken from Campbell’s ‘ Pleasures of Hope ’ — What though my winged hours of bliss have been , , . Like angel visits —few and far between. 2. ‘lt is the little rift within the late ’is from Lord Tennyson’s ‘ldyls of the ELing.’ 3. The aphorism is said to have originated in the Koran (the Mohamedan Bible). It is often attributed to the Scriptures, but it is neither in the Old or New Testaments.

Will yon oblige me with an explanation of the saying 1 Cutting the Gordian knot,’ which I often meet with in reading, but have novelseen explained ?—A Farmer. Gordius was a Phygian peasant, elected a 3 their sovereign by his countrymen. He consecrated his waggon to Jupiter, and tied the cord securing the yoke to the draught-tree in such a way that the two ends° could not be found. A rumour therefore spread about that the man w.. 0 should succeed in untying this wonderful knot would become King of Asia ; and so, when Alexander the Great saw it he said, ‘lt is thus that we loose our knots, and cut it asunder with his sword. The phrase is modernised, and applied to the solver of any social or political problem.. An Improver. —Sir Scott a romances, ‘ Kenilworth Castle/ a historical novel, ‘ Ivanhoe/ ‘Rob Roy,, ‘ Quentin Durward/ and ‘ The Antiquary, should be read in the course of your literary education. - Versifier. —Blank verse must consist cf ‘ heroic ’ lines (ten syllables each), and the breaks in these lines must be regulated by the ear. When a paragraph concludes with a less number of syllables than ten, the next must contain the missing number, so as to complete the ten. Of all styles of verse, it is one that must contain original thoughts and beautiful or striking similes. J.A.J. —You are wrong ; the author was a woman, Margaret, the eccentric wife of the Duke of Newcastle, who lived at the time of the Restoration. The Duchess had an unbounded passion for scribbling, and was proud of that passion, confessing, in one of her latest productions— ‘ i imagine all those who have read my former books will say I have writ enough, unless they were better ; but say what you will, it pleaseth me, and since my delights are harmless I will satisfy my humour/ Then follows a verse, some of the lines of which you quote. Tne whole verse reads—

For had my brain as many fancies in’t _ To fill the world, I’d put them all in print; No matter whether they he well or ill exprest, TVf -y will is done —and that pleases woman best.

She was such an enthusiast in this way that she kept young ladies about her whom she roused in the night to commit to paper any thoughts that came into her head. She wrote poems, plays, letters, •nhilosophicalobservations, and biography, and her complete works fill no fewer than ten folio volumes.

THEOSOPHIC IDEAS IN FICTION. 'The mystic and occult have always had an Absorbing fascination for even the wisest »nd most cultured. The consequence <d this is that there has been imbedded la the literature of every nation folklore, fairy teles, and legends associated with the supernatural. The ordinary commonplace things of life have almost seemed to want what may be called highly-flavoured literary side dishes added to the general menu—but the tabasco of theosophy, and the caviare of spiritualism are, to many, tne very antithesis of pleasurable condiments necessary to an intellectual banquet. Centuries ago Paracelsus, Roger Bacon, and Cornelius Agrippa were synonymous in the popular mind as to what our theoaophibs mi spiritualists are to-day Tho demonoJogy of mediaeval xiurope described by Six' Walter Scott was almost MenScal w 7 ith the eighteenth century developments of which awedenborg and •Caglicstro are more or Io3S associated m the average conception. . . „ oc ,j. I am led to these divings into the past -by tins reading of a list of present day -works cf fiction A short tune MO the •realistic prevailed, causing T. B. Alar ffo cry —

The mighty zolaictic movement now Engrosses us— a miasmatic breath Blown from the slums. We paint life as it

'The hideous side of it, with careful pains, Making a god of the dull commonplace : For have we not the old gods overthrown Pud !8 t up strangest idols , l W. . would clip Imagination’s wing and kill delight. Our sole art being to leave nothing out That readers art offensive. Not for us

Madonnas leaning from their starry thrones Ineffable, nor any heaven-wrought dream Of sculptor or of poet; wo prefer Such nightmare visions that in morbid brains Take shape and substance, thoughts that taint the air c And make all life unlovely. Will it last ?

The poet is already answered, for the mystic powers have possession of the writers’ minds. What seems to bo part and parcel of nearly 25 to 50 per cent of recent fiction deals with occultism, which is simply an evolution of the ideas in which our forefathers indulged. They believed that spirits could be summoned from the vast deep, and that Rosicrucians had possession or a philosopher s stone that could transmute base metals into gold, as well as of an elixir of life that could give man perpetual youth. Schiller in ‘ The Ghost Seer/ Bnlwer Lytton in ‘Zanoni/ and Dumas in ‘ The Memoirs of a Physician ’ have idealised the character of the alleged adept, Joseph Balsamo, alias Count Cagliostro, who received such a merciless pen flagellation from Carlyle in his ‘French Revolution/

But the miraculous and extraordinary, as revealed by the old mystics and the earlier nineteenth century novelists following in the line of Walpole’s * Castle of Otranto’ and Mrs Radclifte s ‘Mysteries of Udolpho/ are as nothing compared to the astonishing flights of imagination that the reader is asked to believe as actual facts narrated by spiritualists and theosopbists. Imagine a hospital surgeon not only bottling the souls of the dying, but actually discovering a chemical combination capable of ‘ holding a soul in solution ’ —yet this is the whole motive of ‘ Atman, the Documents in a Strange Case.’

But little more is known now upon the mysteries of life than when Socrates talked so convincingly with liis friends while the poison was working in Ins veins, shortly before that death so eloquently described by Plato in the ‘Pheode.’ Ihe mystery of sou! and spirit can only, be apprehended and accepted by faith. Modern science lias not yet lifted the curtain of physiological truth—tho theosophy that the modern school of novelists would have the world accept is placed upon intangible and improvable premises.

PAPERS, BOOKS, AND AUTHORS,

Messrs Blackwood have just published the ‘ Life of the late Laurence Oliphant/ a book which is almost certain to prove of the highest interest, for he was undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary and versatile man that ever lived. Mr Arthur a’ Beckett has. been appointed editor of the Sunday Times in the place of Phil Robinson, who vacated the editorial chair in a great hurry recently. Mr Hudson’s work, ‘ A Manual of New Zealand Entomology/ now being printed in London under tiie auspices of the Now Zealand Government, will be published by Messrs West, Newman and Co, Tho colonial plates are executed in a very perfect manner. Some of Ilia native butterflies delineated are exceedingly beautiful.

Mr Hall Caine, the Manx writer, author of ‘The Deemster/ &c., has, in spite of a recent illness, completed a very interesting novel, the scene of which is laid in Tangiers. It will first be published in the Illustrated London News, the opening chapters having already appeared. ‘ George Fleming/ the clever authoress ef those delightfully refined stories ‘Mirage ’ and ‘A Nile Novel/ has been spending some months lately in London. By birth she is an American, but her mother aud father live usually in Italy ; and she is young although having done so much good work. In appearance she is tall, slight, with fair hair and delicate features. Her manner is buoyant, and she is a capital talker, though quite the reverse of ostentatious. The British Museum has acquired lately the manuscript of the poet Keats’ letter, and the manuscripts of George Eliot’s novels (including ‘ Scenes of Clerical Life’) have also been acquired for tho nation. The great novelist left them to Mr Charles Lewes, and, on his death, to the Museum. George Eliot wrote a beautifully clear neat hand, and prefixed to each of her stories a dedication to Mr G. H. Lewes. Messrs Smith, Elder and Co. have published Mrs Sutherland Orr’s Memoir of Robert Browning. Professor Jones, of the University College of South Wales, has also been at work lately on a book about the poet, which he names, ‘ Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher.’ It deals with the author of the ‘Ring and the Book’ as a philosopher more than as a poet. Henry Sampson, well known as ‘ Pendragon ’ of the London Referee, fell a victim to influenza in his fiftieth year. Originally a compositor, and next proof reader, he became connected with several papers as a writer on sporting and general topics. But ho was best known to the reading public as the writer of the sporting article in the Weekly Dispatch under the nom de plume of ‘ Pondragon ' ; and as the successor of Tom Hood, the younger, as editor of Fun. In 18/7 Mr Sampson, with tho late Mr Ashton Dilke, and Mr Francis, of the Dispatch, established the Referee. To the last Mr Sampson was an ardent hunter. In religion he was a Roman Catholic. Although twice married he had only one child, a daughter, by his first wife.