BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1217, 28 June 1895, Page 11

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

The popularity of the Scotch story and sketch, first revived successfully by Mr Barrie, sieems to increase rather than to , diminish, for, I see it stated in the London Spectator that over 40,000 copies have already been sold of Mr "lan Maclaren's" book; " Beside the Bonnie Briar Bush.'?

Mr Barrie's many colonial admirers will beipleased to hear that he hopes to have his new story ready for publication by the end of September. He is also editing', as the term goes nowadays, a new edition of the Waverley Novels, of which ib is well known he is a most devoted admirer. The edition is to be published by Messrs Hodder and Sboughton at a very modest price. New editions of Scott seem to be plentiful just now, for in addition to the Dryburgh and Border editions issued last year by Messrs Black and Nimmo respectively, yet another edition is now being issued by Messrs Archibald Constable and Co. It is said that. Scott is losing his hold on the reading public, but thi3 flood of new editions certainly is strong evidence to the contrai'y. The best proof ■, however, of the remarkable popularity of the Waverley Nove.'s is the fact that for the last thirty years no fewer than thirty hands have been uninterruptedly engaged by one Edinburgh printing firm in j:>roducing Sir Walter Scott's works.

An entirely new edition is also to be issii'jd by Mossrs Macmillau and Co. of the novels of the late Charles The volumes are to be pocket size, and are to be sold at the very moderate figure of Is 6d each. Standard novels are getting cheaper every day, and for a very modest amount a country library or the private buyer may. stock their shelves with a goodly collection of excellent fiction. And some indeed, very many —.of the old novels are very much better worth buying than the new ones. How many of the novels published during the past ten years or so will bear re-reading? Not many, I fear.

The hardest thing ever written about Thackeray's "Vanity Fair" recently appeared in the American magazine The Forum, from the pen of Mr Frederic Harrison, of Positivist fame. Mr Harrison says : —" There is something ungenial, there is a bitter taste left when we have enjoyed these books—especially as we lay down " Vanity Fair." It is a long comedy of roguery, meanness, selfishness, intrigue and affectation. Hakes, ruffians, bullies, parasites, fortune - hunters, adventurers, women who sell themselves, and men who cheat and cringe, pass before us in one incessant procession, crushing vhe weak and making fools of the good."

There is a substratum of truth in what Mr Harrison says, but many New Zealanders will agree with me that " Vanity Fair" is surely not all cynicism, not totally devoid of the milk of human kindness. Amelia's loving 1 constancy, bestowed as it was on a worthless object, is assuredly a most beautiful touch. Then Dobbin, poor gawky, simple Dobbin —was there ever a better fellow at bottom than " honest Dob " ? Becky, Lord Steyne and his contemptible parasites, the hectoring plutocrat, old Osborne, and the others may be ugly enough to look upon, but Thackeray painted life as he saw it, and the utter worthlessness and downright vice of some of his characters only serve as foils to show up the purity and simple faith of Amelia and of Dobbin. As to the insinuation conveyed by Mr Harrison in his phrase "these books," an insinuation that all Thackeray's books are pictures of the mean, the low, the vicious, I would scout it most energetically. Where can we find a finer sample of the true gentleman than in Colonel Newcome ? a more graceful, lovable girl than Laura Bell ? where more honest fun ihan is contributed by Costigan, Fred Bayham and Captain Shandon ? Thackeray is on the side of truth and honesty, of purity, of decent living, all through. Where in English fiction can be found a more pathetic scene than, say, the death of Colonel Newcome ? But why pursue the subject further? Thackeray's fame will live when the very name of his latest critic has been buried in oblivion.

The Rev. Sabine Baring-Gould, the author of the popular hymn, " Onward, Christian Soldier," is at once a country parson, a country squire, a lord of the manor, a sermon-writer, a student of comparative religion, a popular novelist, and a poet. He has written fifty books, is deeply versed in mediaeval myths and legends, and at the same time is in sympathy with modern life and progress. He is sixty years old, and lives in a beautiful old Elizabethan manor-house at Lew Frenchard, Dorsetshire, where the Gould family have lived eve*' since the days of James I. Mr BaringGould is the author of that powerful " Mehalah," " a story of the great salt marsh," and of a perfect host of other stories. An extract from one of his latest novels, " Kitty Alone," appears in the Mail this week.

According to the late Mr Froude's will, all the literary papers he left behind him must be destroyed, including the imprinted documents concerning the Carlyles which Thomas Carlyle bequeathed to him.

Alphonse Daudet, the famous Frenchnovelist, was London's latest literary lion when the 'Frisco mail left. Daudet is a Provencal by birth, being born at the picturesque old town of Nimes in 1840. How he went tc Paris, a mere youth, and of his earlier struggles he has told in his charming book, ". Thirty Years of Paris." In 1861 he became secretary to the famous Due de Morny, but his literary fame increasing, he soon relinquished the position. His most important novel is " Fromont the Younger and Eisler the Elder," in which the heroine, Sidonie, is a heartless little adventuress, curiously reminiscent, to my mind, of Becky Sharp. Nearly all Daudet's works hav6 been translated into English, his "Tartarin of Tarascon" being especially popular. Tartarin is a species of French Winkle and Pickwick combined, although with purely Gallic touches impossible to either. "Kings in Exile" is also a popular work, whilst others prefer " Le Nabab," a novel which hao not appeared in English and which gives a remarkable picture of Parisian life under the Second Empire. In "Jack," a very pathetic story, Daudet reminds one of Dickens. He is incomparably at the head of modern French novelists, and it will be curious to compare his reception in London with the altogether exaggerated enthusiasm in English literary circles when Zola visited f JJa perfi.de Albion." As an artist, Daudet is immeasurably Zola's superior, and only now and then—as in his repulsive, almost revolting, '^Sappho"— has the furrnor descended to the foul depths permanently tenanted by the latter.

The Times points out an amusing error in the notice of Mrs Humphrey Ward in "Men and Women of tho Time." Her well-known translation of Amiel's Journal Intime appears as Arniel's "Journal in Time." The same error appeared in the last edition of the same book of reference. In time it will be corrected.

Poor Mr James Payn, tho veteran novelist and editor of the Comhill, has been an invalid now for some time. In the current number of the magazine is an article in his tenderest style, entitled " The Backwater of Life." "We cannot all be philosophers," says the writer, and it is almost unmixed sadness " to find oneself in the Backwater,: crippled and helpless, but still able to see through the osiers on the island between us what is passing along the River—the passenger vessels and the pleasure boats—and to hear faintly the voices and the laughter ... to watch the lovers as they drop down the stream in their light skiff." There is only one consolation, we are told—the visits of friends.

Mr Thomas Hardy has changed the title of his now story, " The Simpletons," because, as he recently discovered, one of Charles Beade's stories was called " The Simpleton." Talking of Mr Hardy, his admirers in this Colony may be interested to know that an entirely new and complete edition of his many charming novels is now being issued in monthly volumes by Messrs Osgood, Mcllvaine and Co. Bach volume contains two etchings, and the binding and general get-up is said to be very handsome.

The first volune of the series is the everdelightful "Far from the Madding Crowd." Mr Hardy, who contributes a new preface,

reminds his readers that it was in this book that he " first ventured to adopt the word Wessex" from the pages of early English history. He writes : —" The series of novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene. Finding that the area of a single county did not aiford a canvas large enough for this purpose, and that there were objections to an invented name, I disinterred the old one. . . . Since then the appellation which I had thought to reserve to the horizons and landscapes of a merely realistic dreamcountry, has become more and more popular as a practical provincial definition ; and the dream-country has, by degrees, solidified into a utilitarian region which people can go to, take a house in, and write to the papers from* But I ask all good and gentle readers to be so kind as to forget this, and to refuse steadfastly to believe that there are any inhabitants of a Victorian Wessex outside the pages of this and the companion volumes in which they were discovered."

Mr Hardy adds that although when the tale was written there was a sufficient reality to meet the descriptions both of backgrounds and personages, this could hardly any longer be found. The lifeholds cottages are gone, the malt - house of Weatherbury has been pulled down these 20 years, divination by Bible and key, the shearing-supper and the harvest-home have gone, and the love of fuddling has gone with them. The change, according to Mr Hardy, is due to the recent supplanting of the class of stationary cottagers by a population of migratory labourers.

Mr T. H. Escott's "Life of Lord Randolph Churchill" to be published shortly before the last 'Frisco mail left London. When it appears, extracts from its most prominent contents will be given in the Mail. Mr Escott was formerly the editor of the Fortnightly Review, .which, he had to resign through ill-health.

In the "Literary Letter " in the ■ Illustrated London News, " CK.S." points out that Mr Isaac Zangwill was very nearly anticipated in the title of his latest novel, "The Master," and that by no less a person than Charlotte Bronte. "CK.S." says : " The original manuscript of Miss Bronte's * Professor,' a story which was not published until after her death, but which was written before ' Jane Eyre,' has just come into my possession. The most interesting feature about the title-page is the fact that beneath the title, * The Professor,' another title may be found, and on holding it up to the light one discovers that Charlotte Bronte's first intention was to have called her story ' The Master.' "

By the way, I may mention that Mr Zangwill's story, which was described by the Spectator recently as " the best novel of artistic life ever published in England, is now on sale in the colony. The novel is also running in serial form in the Christchurch Weelcly Press.

In an article on Epigrams, in the Manchester Monthly, there are one or two that are not widely known, of which this of Lord Erskine's is perhaps the best ■:■ — The French have taste in all they do, Which we are quite without; For Nature, which to them gave gout, To us gave only gout.

Messrs Hutchison and Co. have issued an English translation of " Chiffon's Marriage," by that immensely popular Freach writer, " Gyp." " Gyp " for years contributed a short story, always witty, sometimes somewhat coarse, to the Parisian weekly, La Vie Parisienne. Her later and longer stories are sold in great numbers, but many, I should imagine, are decidedly too cerulean in tinge to be translated into English. "Gyp" is a granduieC3 of the famous Mirabeau.

In Current Literature, an American magazine of extracts, which »vas highly recommended to readers of the "Mail in last week's issue, I find the following good story:—"lt was a little New Hampshire village among the mountains, where the country store served as post office, circulating library, shoe store, and everything else combined, that a Boston lady, glancing over the books, enquirod : ' Have you Browning?' * No,' said tho attendant, somewhat regretfully, and not knowing just what kind of an article Browning might be, 'we have not.' Then, more brightly: 'We have blacking and blueing, and have a man who does whiting. We occasionally do pinking. Would any of these do ?'"

Talking about Browning, local admirers of that author should not fail to attend the coming lecture on Browning which is to be delivered by His Honor Judge Richmond in connection with the Forward Movement Literary Society. The date of the lecture is the 31st of July.

A correspondent asks me to state publisher's nam© and price of an English translation of Omar Khayyam, the Persian poet, who lived in the 12th century, and ' who sang of " love, wine and roses." Mr Paradise, of Messrs Whitcombe and Tombs, has courteously informed me that the best, indeed, the only recognised, translation of Omar Khayyam is by Fitzgerald, and is published by Macmillan azd Co., price 10s 6d. Another edition, with illustrations by Elihu Vedder, a celebrated Amei-ican artist, is published by Houghton, Mifflin and Co., at prices varying from one to six guineas, according to paper and binding. There is now an Omar Khayyam Club in London which includes in its membership some of the leading English literary men of the day.