LITERARY NOTES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1201, 8 March 1895, Page 15

LITERARY NOTES.

“ l would rather be a poor man in a gavret with plenty of hooka than a king who did not love reading."—Lokd Macaulay.

Address all communications for this column to “The Kditor, Nk.w Zh.ai.and Mail.” Publishers and booksellers are invited to send books and publications of general interest for notice in til s column, thoreby enabling country readers to be in toucii with the latest works in the Publishers sending books for review are requested to mention their price.

WITH PAPER-KNIFE AND PEN.

“The Use op Lies,” by Sir John Lubbock, Bart., M.P. (Macmillan and Co., London.) 3s 6d. Sir John Lubbock is a many-sided man. Besides being a prominent and respected English politician he is one of the most valued authorities on modern banking, he has written a treatise on “ Ants, Bees and Wasps,” which is at once a most valuable scientific monograph and the most entertaining of works, and his ethnological studies in his well-known works “ Prehistoric Times,” “The Origin of Civilisation,” and the “Primitive Condition of Man,” are standing proofs of the patience and depth of his research and of the charm with which he can invest some of the most seemingly abstruse of subjects. Of late years he seems to have recognised with Pope that the “proper study of mankind is man,” and in his “Pleasures of Life,” published three or four years ago and then reviewed in the columns of this paper, he dealt with English social life in its many varied aspects. The volume now before us “The Use of Life,” is a valuable contribution to, the same subject—the art of employing the time allotted to- man in his earthly life to the best and most wholesome advantage of himself and his fellows. And we may say at once that this new book of Sir John’s is one of the most interesting, most helpful, healthiest books we have read for some time past. . It consists of a series of essays dealing with every phrase of the privileges and duties which the civilised human race are possessed of and have to perform. There are chapters on “ Health,” on “ Recreation,” on “ Money Matters,” on “ Tact,” on “ National ” and on “ Self Education,” on “Patriotism”, on “ Citizenship,”' on “Industry,” and amongst many others on “Character,” “Peace and Happiness,” and last, not least, on “ Religion.” The opening passage of the first essay gives the key note to the whole collection. “ The most important thing to learn in life is how to live. There is nothing men are so anxious to keep as life, and nothing they take so little pains to keep well.” Sir John tries his utmost to induce the well-keeping of this most precious thing, life, to induce a study of the best and most healthy and most helpful way for a man to employ his life to the benefit not only, of himself but of his fellow creatures. He disavows the charge of optimism which it appears has been levelled against him, but, on the other hand, he has evidently a most decided hatred of the pessimism which is so common nowadays, and whilst not disputing the existence of evils, combats most strenuously the increasing modern tendency to take a morbid, melancholy view of the future of our social conditions. This is a book which, had we the power, we would put into the hands of every young New Zealander, male and female. Honesty and sincerity of opinion, healthiness of sentiment, and above all a non-sectarian, true Christianity, are mirrored in its every page, and it contains. more than any other book that we are acquainted with, a genuine spirit of true comradeship,”- an ardent sympathy with the suffering and oppressed, a broad and enlightened charity, which cannot be too highly esteemed. The author is always interesting—sometimes he is amusing—ever is he free from exaggeration, sober of thought, and eminently sympathetic and helpful. The three chapters headed respectively, “Faith,” “Hope,” and “Charity” are in themselves three of the most beautiful “ lay sermons ” we have read, and throughout the book there is such a wealth of timely and most apt quotation, that one stands astonished at the range of the author’s reading and his truly marvellous powers of memory. The reading of such a book as this cannot fail to make us wiser—it should also make us much happier. In conclusion, we can only regret that limit of space prevents our quoting some of the many wise and useful thoughts with which this book is so generously gemmed. It is a volume which we can most cordially recommend, and, like all Messrs Macmillan’s books, is beautifully printed and tastefully bound, and issued at a very moderate price.

“The Story op a Modern Woman,” by ‘ Ella Hepworth Dixon. (London : 3 William Heinnemann. Heinnemann’s Colonial Library.) 3s 6d. This is the most interesting and least morbid and unwholesome of the “ New Woman ” class that we have read for some time past. There certainly runs throughout its pages a strong strain of that feeling of intense revolt against the inequalities of sex and the disabilities under which many ’women so openly chafe which has characterised so many of its predecessors; but this particular note does not unduly predominate, and the reader is not confronted with the wild and sweeping assertions, with the rash and reckless theories of life, and, say it we must, the astounding lack of common decency which we have had to deplore in some of the recent fiction in which Sarah Grand led the way. The story which Miss Dixon tells with so much force, and also with so much wise restraint, is that of the orphan daughter of a scientific man, a young lady of considerable strength of character but not devoid of womanly graces and of womanly weaknesses. She engages herself —somewhat too hastily, som& readers may think—to a most consummate prig, whose portrait (a

most merciless satire it is) is decidedly the best of the mahy good things in any ah extremely clever book. This gentleman j is an excellent type of the prig-politici£fcn-"=-vain, selfish, crammed with the contents of innumerable Blue Books, cultivating a most instating sententiousness of conversation, and precisely the sort of person that the clever young heroine ought to .have, seen through at a glance. That she did not read him aright, at first, was due to the fact that she was young, almost friendless, in want of sympathy, and that her full and, eventually, very keen powers of discrimination were not then, as they i were later on, properly developed. After a I hard fight in the bitter strife for employment in the great and cruel city, she was more fully able to realise the pettiness of her early lover’s egotism; but even then the authoress does not divest her strongminded heroine of a womanly weakness, which shows itself in regrets for a lost and worthless love. But when the prig-politi-cian wearies of the vulgar and brainless woman of wealth whom he has married and tries to induce his first love to quit England as a wife “in everything but the name,” moral strength is displayed in full i force, and the prig, sorely and utterly discomfitted, has to take refuge in dissipation. The adventures of the heroine when in search of employment in London are told with a sense of humour rarely possessed by such of the “ new women” species as we have been privileged to meet with with in recent fiction, and there are, in particular, some descriptions of certain phases of journalistic life in London which afforded us genuine amusement. There is a subsidiary story in the book iu which a fashionable “ lady’s doctor ” and his “ love passages ” —creditable and otherwise —are dealt with. The exposure of this character’s heartless treatment of one of his victims is admirably done; but, indeed, the whole story is much above the average of modern novels, and we were very sorry when we reached the end and found that Miss Dixon leaves her heroine to struggle on with “aweinspiring, inexorable, triumphant London” —poor girl! This “ Story of a Modern Woman” is one of the best of the many excellent novels which Mr Heinnemann has given us in his well - printed and attractively-bound Colonial Library.

“The Pale Maeu Magazine, February, 1895. The Pall Mall Magazine, a copy of the February number of which is sent us by the editors, Lord Frederick Hamilton and Sir Douglas Straight, has now reached its fifth volume, and is decidedly the handsomest in the way of typography, illustrations and general “ get up ” of the many new English magazines which have sprung into existence during the past three. or four years or so. The paper upon which the magazine is printed is of a superb quality, and the illustrations, are of the highest class- successfully rivalling the choicest productions of the two famous American publications, The Gentury and Harper’s, than which no praise can be more conclusive. The contents of the issue before us, both as regards literature and art, are of an all-round excellence to be met with in no other publication of the kind with which we are acquainted. A magnificent coloured plate representing a French military bravo of the eighteenth century, who might have stepped bodily out of one of Mr Stanley Weyman’s romances, is the frontispiece, and there is an amusing sketch in colours by a Japanese artist of a’-London scene, besides a host of well-drawn pictures illustrative of the text of the various articles. The serial story is by Mr Rider Haggard, and there are short, complete stories by Mr Guy Boothby, Miss Ella Hepworth Dixon (whose admirable novel “ The Story of a Modern Woman,” is noticed in another column) and others. Mr Phil Robinson contributes a stirring story “ The Mudcoil Indian,” and Mr Frankfort Moore another entitled “ At the King’s Head.” “Through Apple Land” is the title of a well-written and beautifully illustrated article on the fruit growing districts of Tasmania, and the fertile and facile pen of Mr Walter Besant is responsible for a most interesting article on the historical associations of Westminster. Amongst the- many other noticeable features of what is a very strong number is the gossipy and witty article —causerie would be the most fitting name for it—by Mr Zangwill, entitled “ Without Prejudice,” in which the clever young exponent of the “ New Humour ” displays a mordant wit which is peculiarly his own. Altogether the Pall Mall Magazine, if its regular quality can b 9 fairly estimated by the issue forwarded by its editors, stands undoubtedly at the head of English magazines with regard to art, and in its literary features presents many decided novelties which cannot fail to be well appreciated by the magazine-reading public.

“ The Book of the Fair,” Part 16, by Hubert Howe Bancroft. (Chicago: The Bancroft Publishing Company.)

Part 16, the latest to hand of this monumental record of the great World s Fair, contains a continuation of the description of the Ordnance and Communication section, but the major portion of the number is devoted to the Live Stock Department, of which the engravings, if possible, out-rival in beauty of finish anything which has previously appeared in this truly unique work. Never before in the history of even American art engraving has such beautiful work been set before the public. The best London and Continental process engravings we have seen are far behind these American pictures. The magnificent fullpage pictures of buildings and views in the World’s Fair grounds are continued, the finest perhaps in the issue before us being one entitled “ Looking up the North Canal,” which is a perfect triumph of the engraver’s art. The section of “ Anthropology and Ethnology ” is reached towards the end of the number, which is one of the best we have yet seen of a work which,

when completed, will be one of the most magnificent art publications this century has produced. The literary quality of the i text is Very high, Mr Bancroft's style being admirably lucid and informative- The "Book of the Bair* is having, we hear, an immense sale in the United states, and probably, when complete, will enjoy a popularity not confined to America. No serial art publication that we know of equals it m beauty, whilst the variety of subjects dealt with make it an illustrated cyclopaedia of the arts and sciences such as probably has never before been issued. C.W.

BOOKS RECEIVED

We have also received, and will review in our next issue, the following: —“ With Feet of Clay” (Melbourne, Messrs George Pobertson and Co.); “In the Year of Jubilee,” by George Gissing (Bell’s Colonial Library); “ Peter Ibbetson,” by George DuMaurier (London, Messrs Macmillan and Co.); and “The Vagabonds,” by Margaret Woods (London, Messrs Macmillan and Co.), the three last volumes being sent us through Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs.