GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, 30 December 1892, Page 12

GOSSIP.

A serial story by Miss Memo Muriel Dowie (Mrs Norman), author of that clever book, • The Girl in the Karpathians,' will appear shortly in Chambers" Journal. It is It is called ' The Hint o' Hairst '—the end of harvest.

The nouveau riche who bought his books by the hundredweight has been justified by the Anarchists. It is said that the warehouse of Dentu, the well-known publisher, would have been destroyed by the bombs which exploded recently in Paris, but for the mass of books contained in it, which, weighing 160,0001b5, steadied the building and prevented it from falling in. After this, probably, the Parisians will acquire a taste for •solid' reading, simply for prudential reasons.

Mr Rudyard Kipling's new Mulvaney story will appear shortly in Macmillan's Magncine.

My readers should on no account miss the chatty 'Memoriesof Dean Hole,' which appear under the heading ' Sketcher' in this week's MAIL. The Dean was an intimate friend of Leech and Thackeray, and one of the oldest contributors to Punch. By the way, the Dean is one of the greatest Engiish authorities on rose-growing.

I am glad to hear that many readers of the Mail appreciate the admirable Literary Gossip contributed by our special London correspondent. It is so fresh, so thoughtful, and so useful to all who are interested in the latest and best books. ' My only grievance is,' writes a correspondent from Napier,' that the state of my purse, prevents my taking but a very few of your London correspondent's tips, and he makes me feel both envious and covetous.'

Editions de luxe of Shakespeare still come out at home, where there are wealthy ' biblios' always ready to buy them. Messrs Simpkin, Marshall and Co. hare nearly ready a very fine illustrated edition of ' Othello.' It will contain facsimile reproductions of twenty original water-colour drawings by Ludovico Marchetti, and numerous engravings after drawings by the same artist. Very few of these magnificent editions come to the colonies. We have so few_ people who have money enough to spend in such luxuries.

The first book written by the famous Frenchman, • Pierre Loti,' is now to be purchased in Wellington. It is a little halfcrown volume called • Baxahu,' and deals, in the form of an autobiography, with the adventures of a French officer in Tahiti some years ago when old Queen Pomare was living, and life in the Paradise of the Pacific had not altogether been brutalised by the Europeans. lam afraid Mrs Grundy weuld hardly approve of Loti'sbook, as it deals with matters severely outside the ken of the British Matron. Nevertheless, it is a charming picture of the free and easy life of the old days, and there are some most beautiful if somewhat too sensuously described scenes in it. A book to buy, especially by those who remember ' South Sea Bubbles,' &c, by the ' Earl aud the Doctor.'

Apropos to the clever French writer mentioned in the last paragraph the following is of interest : Pierre Loti—a translation of whose novel, ' A Phantom from the East,'has jnst been issued by Mr J. E. Gordon, Mr Fisher TJnwin—has movod his household gods from Eochefort, and has established himself, his wife, [and little boy Sam, at Hendaye, on the Franco-Spanish frontier, where he is working hard at his new novel, ' Matelot,' which wUI come out in the same series as Daudet's ' Rose et Ninette' next spring. He has also promised Madame Adam to write a novel for the Nouvelle Revue, entitled ' Une Exilee,' which, it is whispered, will be a more or less faithful transcript of the sorrows of' a certain poetical, sentimental, and literary Queen, who has always held the French novelist in great affection. Pierre Loti's villa is built on the seashore, and the room in which he works is at the top of a tower, and can only be reached by a strong ladder. Although he is hospitable enough, ■end receives visits in abundance, he lives a strangely retired life, scarcely ever writing a letter, absolutely refusing himself to interviewers, and receiving no daily paper. On the other hand, he reads all the best contemporary fiction he can lay his hands on, and spends long hours playing with his little boy on the sands.

Alas ! the last of the familiar little green covered volumes is out—' The Death of JSnone, rtkbar's Dream, and Other Poems,' by Alfred, Lord Tennvson. The best poem in the work is that which gives its name to the volume, with a dedication to Dr Jowett, tfe« famous' Master of Balliol.' An English

critic says, 'I must, however, confess to being fascinated by the lines to Sir Walter Scott:

0 great and gallant Scott, True gentleman, heart, blood, and bone, 1 would it had been my lot To have seen thee, and heard thee, and known.

Is there not a certain picturesqueness in this message from one of our greatest authors to another from the late Laureate to one who was all but his predecessor, for Sir Walter refused the laureateship. We place this little green volume on our shelves with a sigh. It is the last of them.

1 know that a good many book-lovers read this column in the Mail, and I would remind all those in particular who delight in reading' books about books' of the fact that an admirably got up and much cheaper edition of Mr Leslie Stephens ( Hours in a Library,' is now being published by Messrs Smith, Elder & Co. The first volume is now out, and which is now procurable in Wellington, contains essays on Richardson, Pope, Scott, De Quincey, and Balzac. Mr Stephens is perhaps the forceful and scholarly literary critic in England, and these essays (I remember reading them all in dear old Cornhill some years ago) are amongst the best work he has done. By all means look out for ' Hours in a Library.' As a matter of style, Mr Stephens hns only one serious competitor, Robert Louis Stevenson, whose ' Familiar Studies of Men and Books' is a special treasure of all booklovers.

Many of my readers have doubtless delighted in Mrs Croker's novels, ' Proper Pride,' ' Pretty Miss Neville,' and ' Diana Barringten.' The authoress lives in India at a health resort on the bank of the Himalayas. Her latest novel, * A Family Likeness,' is to be published this month in London. Mrs Croker's name was made at a very early stage of her career by the fact that Mr Gladstone was found reading either her first or second novel in the House of Commons, a circumstance which naturally attracted attention to the book. It is a lucky thing for an author when Mr Gladstone takes particular notice of a new book. The G.O.M.'s letter to the authoress of Robert Elsmere (published by her of course) send up the circulation of that, to my mind, intensely dreary novel, to a very high figure. A few years back Mr Gladstone made the success of Mr Shorthouse's ' John Inglesant' in a similar manner.

I am afraid that the William Watson, the poet (who as we were told by a cable last week), stopped the Duke of Edinburgh's carriage and was sent to a lunatic asylum) is the poet Watson. William Watson is a young man, a hard-working journalist with narrow means, and from a paragraph which I notice in the London Daily Chronicle, advocating the granting to him of a small pension, I fear he may have been pressed for money, and through overstrain and overwork gone mad.

It would be a severe loss to English poetry of to-day if this assumption be correct, for he is undoubtedly one of the best of the younger poets. The writer of Book Gossip in The Queen makes the following reference to Mr Watson :

I Mr William Watson has been eoming to the front of late. He has written poems which cannot be classed in that convenient category of ' minor verse.' ' Wordsworth's Grave,' ' Shelley,' and others are full of fine lines, and they almost tempt one to place Mr Watson as a latter-day Gray. If only the critical element in his verse were not so pronounced he would be a greater poet. But not a more interesting one, surely. At any rate, that critical faculty stands him in good stead in the volume entitled 'Lyric Love,' which he has just edited for the ' Golden Treasury Series.' Here, from Chaucer to Lord Tennyson, from Milton to Mr Swinburne we have poem after poem of sweetest tunefulness—all concerned with the old story which Heine reminds us—were reminder needed—is ever new. And Mr Watson has found some good material among the younger men, Mr Robert Bridges and Mr Wilfred Blunt for example. But who is Agnes E. Glase ? Her ' Three Kisses of Farewell' is a very pretty poem, and so also is the Editor's Dedication to' M. R. C.,' which proves, if proof were wanted, that there are still poets among us:

Take then, this garland of melodious flowers, Till he, whose hand the fragrant chaplet

wove, Another wreath from his own garden bring ; These captive blsssoms of a hundred bowers, Hold them as hostages of lyric love, In pledge of all the songs he longs to sing.

Mr Fergus Hume's latest novel' The Fever of Life,' is unmercifully slated by some of the London papers. One in particular is very severe upon the author of ' A Mystery of a Handsome Cab,' saying :-' The Fever of Life 'is a fever indeed, but not as life as ordinary human beings know it. Ladies with fierce eyes, Maori progenitors, and panther characteristics are, fortunately, not common in this workaday world. On the other hand such young rncn as Toby Clendon are common enough, in more senses than one. In fact, most of the personages in this extravagant book are either Cockney counter-jumpers or of the family flavour of Bombastes Furioso. A little less of the Surrey melodrama is extremely desirable in the works of Mr Fever Hume,

There is a capital article in the Pa.l Mall Budget for Nov. 10, entitled ' George Mere dith at Home.' The author of 'Rhola Fleming,' Eva Harington.' and ' Diana of the Crossways,' lives at Box Hill in Surrey. He does most of his writing in a chalet (as did did Dickons at Gad's Hill). The Pall Mall man tells us something new, when he informs us that it is to Mr -George Meredith that the reading world owes the publication of that charming book ' The Story of a South African Farm,' by Olive Schreiner. Mr Meredith was then [acting as • reader ' for Messrs Chapman aid Hallj and when the

Bouth African lady's manuscript was sub ; mitted to him by the young and unknown authoress, he immediately divined the extraordinary power and pathos of the story. Mr Meredith is one of the few English novelists who can describe a game at cricket. Like Dickens, says the Pall Mall man, Mr Meredith was born in Hampshire, ' the cradle of the game,' but it must have been in Surrey that he witnessed the match of Fallowfield against Beckley, which he narrates in ' Eva Harrington.' Mr Meredith's novels are still' as caviare to the million,' his only too frequent obscurities being, I. must personally confess at times very trying, but his books are rapidly becoming more popular, and he has a faithful band of devoted admirers.

Is there anything new under the sun 1 A correspondent of the Army and Navy Gazette writes as follows on the subject of Crossing the Bar,' as to the source whence Tennyson might have got the idea : —Sir, — Referring to your interesting and suggestive paragraph quoting correspondence from The Daily Chronicle in reference to Tennyson's ' Crossing the Bar'andDrW. H. Russell's description of the Bluejacket's Cemetery in the Crimea, I think I may be permitted to suggest the possible source from whence inspiration was drawn from the quaint inscription on ' No. 9. To J. Tobin. Died of wounds received in action.

' I am anchored here with many of the fleet, But once again wo will set sail our Admiral Christ to meet.' Whether this or that, however, suggested the Pilot to Tennyson is too difficult a problem to even venture to approaoh for solution. The following, which I copied on October 29, 1872, is from a very old gravestone in Selby Abbey Church, Yorkshire : ' Tho' Boreas with his Blustering Blasts Has tost me to and fro, Yet by the handy work of God I'm here enclosed below. And in this Silent Bay Hie With many of our Fleet, Until the day that I set sail, My Admiral Christ to meet.'

The very clever young artist Phil. May, who was for some years on the staff of the Syd. ney Bulletin, but who isnowa resident of ' ( The Big Smoke,' seems to be doing well at Home, judging by the following paragraph from a London paper :Mr Phil Mays 'Winter Annnal' will be at tho disposal of the public after the 22nd inst., and no doubt it will have a large sale. Dr Conan Doyle gets nearly £SO for the short story which he contributes. So busy is the creator of • Sherlock Holmes ' that it was something of a rush for him to get his story finished in time for the ' Annual.'. This is Mr Phil May's third venture in the way of what may be called ' special editions 'in art, helped by literature. He began with the ' Parson and the Painter,' which sold enormously, and is still selling. He followed with The Summer Annual,' which has sold 50,000 copies. Yet another new venture is contemplated a few months hence by Mr May.