LITERARY GOSSIP

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1681, 18 May 1904, Page 23

LITERARY GOSSIP

Mr Chichele Plowden, the London magistrate, is a recognised purveyor of humour, but he can also appreciate wit in others. Discussing with a lady the title of his recent hook, he told her he had almost made up his mind to call it ‘Grain or Chaff.’ The lady remarked, T presume you will add “as picked up by a Beek.” ’ Mr Plowden told this tale at the New Vagabond Club dinner, where he was entertained as guest of the evening. Needless to say the audience were likewise entertained.

The action for libel brought by Captain De Keyser and two other Belgian officers .against Captain Burrows, the author of The Curse of Central Africa.’ and Messrs Everett and Co., the publishers. is not one that reflects any credit upon literature. The most scandalous accusations possible were made against the plaintiffs in the book, and not ope tittle of evidence could be induced to prove them. There were circumstances in connection with the publication that put an even worse complexion upon the matter than that it was a mere collection of unverified gossip, 'lhe jury awarded £SOO damages to Captain De Keyser, and £SO to each of the other plantiffs, and it is difficult to feel that they erred on the side of severity.

•How English is written to-day is an interesting study to anyone who reads the newspapers with an eye to their use. of words and phrases. The anxiety to arrest attention, to achieve a ‘purple patch,’ so overmasters some writers that they seem oblivious to any other effect they may produce. Thus in an article on Japan and America’ in a leading weekly we meet with the following figure of speech to illustrate the author’s idea of Russian unpreparedness immediately anterior to the outbreak of war. “The Buddhist who sits for years contemplating 'his own navel necessarily loses all accurate sense of the proportions of the human . frame.” The attitude of Europe to Ruosia is thus explained : “All Europe was quailing with the fear of Russian aggrandisement when this little tetse-fly settled on her vast hulk.” The same writer describes ihe Japanese as ‘a people who to the energy of Englishmen add something of the vanity of Parisians.’ It is this eagerness to impress that finds vent n the daily Press in giotesque cartoons. We wonder how long these will be tolerated and to what lengths of bad taste it will be possible for their designers to go. To portray Cabinet Ministers dresssed as girls in short skirts striking ridiculous attitudes reminds us of the attempt to place The Happy Land’ on the stage many years ago. The Lord Chamberlain suppressed the play, but there is no power, to interfere with the comic press, except an appeal to the law of libel, which has been made with .ittle success.

Tennyson Thanked God Almighty’ that Shakespeare had not left any private letters and could not be ‘ripped open like a pig* for the satisfaction of the public curiosity. In the ‘Ehglish Men of Letters’ (Macmillan and C 0.,) series no place has hitherto been found for the greatest of all Englishmen of letters, probably for satisfactory reasons. It is said that a volume on Shakespeare was originally contemplated, and that the author was to have been Gorge Eliot, but the book was never written. It is stated now that the work is to be done by Professor Walter ''Raleigh, whose recent books on Wordsworth and Milton have been so well received.

Professor Sayce has written a volume for the Religious Tract Society entitled ‘Monument Facts and Higher Critical Fancies.’ Professor Sayce says: “It is archaeology and not philology that has to do with history. The study of language and the study of the past history of mankind belong to different departments of thought. For the purpose of history philology can only incidentally he of service, only in so far as it throws light on the meaning of literary record or assists in the decipherment of an ancient inscription. In,the eyes, therefore, of inductive science there is only one admissible test of the authenticity and

trustworthiness of an ancient record, and that is an archaeological test. So far as the historical side of the question is concerned, the philologist pure and simple is ruled out of court. It is the archaeological evidence of Egyptology or Assyriology, and not the philological evidence, which can alone be applied to the settlement of historical disputes.”

The first volume of the long-expected ‘Variorum Edition’ of the works of Beaumont and Fletcher is now nearly ready for publication. The edition has been planned under the general direction of Mr A. H. Bullen, wdio has been assisted by several scholars in the preparation of the various plays. The work will be completed in twelve volumes, and the last volume will contain memoirs, excursuses, etc., by the general editor. The edition is to be published jointly by Mi* A. 11. Bullen and Messrs George Bell and Sons.

Tomaso’s Fortune/ a volume of short stories by the late Mr Henry Seton Merriman is published by Macmillan and (Jo. According to ‘W. W.,’ in “The Week’s Surrey,” one of the causes of the evil days upon which the ‘special correspondent’ has fallen is the competition ol the rich amateur. The love of adventure inspires the latter with the ambition to he dubbed ‘war correspondent,’ and he is well content if the journal that employs him will only pay his return fare to the base of operations. Indeed, lie has been known to go out dfitirely at his own expense. Hence, only a very few of the ‘specials’ to-day axe paid a really handsome salary and given a free hand as regards expenses. The majority make a bargain to be paid for so many letters, at so much per letter, and supplement this by selling photographs to illustrated papers. It is sad to think a noble profession has fallen so low as this.

In the “Hibbert Journal” Professor Henry Jones writes on The Moral Aspect of the Fiscal Question’; Sir Oliver Lodge contributes some ‘’Suggestions towards the Re-interpretation of Christian Doctrine’; Canon Hensley Henson writes on T?ie Resurrection of Jesns Christ/ and the Bishop of Ripon on ‘Gladstone as a Moral and Religious Personality/ Other articles are: “Mr Meyer’s Theory of the Subliminal Self/ by Mr Andrew Lang; ‘The Axiom of Infinity: a New Presupposition of ht/ by Professor Cl J. Keyser; The Passing of Conviction/ by Professor W. Jethro Brown; and ‘North Arabia* and the Bible: A Defence’ by Dr H. Winckler.

The late Sir Edwin Arnold, according to “The Daily Chronicle,” was “perhaps the most . suave man who ever paced Fleet-street, where the rapid conditions of journalism do not make for a magnificent manner.” We admit that the thoroughfare itself is often a busy one, in which a poet who, cfrlivious of the jostle, composes a verse is liable to lose his purse—as once, happened to the late Dr Peter Bayne; but there are quiet spots that may be reached after deviating a few yards, where a new Milton might compose, an up-to-date ‘Paradise Lost’ with scarcely an interruption. The that the neighbourhood of Fleetstreet is all ‘hustle and bustle’ is a crude one not entertained by its habitues. Nor, if you pass from the street into the editorial offices, do you find, except in a few cases, the turmoil and hurrying the comic papers lead you to expect. Indeed, an American editor who visited a London editor’s room for the first time expressed his opinion that everybody in Fleet-street was halfasleep. There have been occasions when even a Fleet-street journalist has been known to share that opinion

The incidents that happen to American authors, while they are engaged on their new books, take one’s breath away. American novelists, in particular (says the “Book Monthly”), seem to be martyrs to “excursions and alarms ’ which find their only justification in subsequent paragraphs. The latest case is that of a lady who has a couple of sisters as well as, on her own part, great literary gifts. Her habit has been to exercise the latter in the forenoon, and in the afternoon lot the former into the new progress of the story. But the interest got so exciting, as the novel drew to an end, that the sistei.s camped outside the 100 m where it was being written, and had to be fed on successive sheets of “copy”: It was certainly distracting?-