LITERARY GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1737, 14 June 1905, Page 15

LITERARY GOSSIP.

“An Angler’s Hours” is the- title of a book which Messrs Macmillan and 00. have just published. The author is Mr H. T. Sheringham, who was- recently appointed to the control of the angling department of “The Field,” in succession to Mr C. H. Cook. He continues a tradition of literary activity which attaches to that office owing to its hawing been held by such men as Mr Francis Francis, Mr William Senior (“Red Spinner”), and Mr Cook (“John Bickerdyke”). Like his predecessors, Mr Sheringham is keenly interested in every branch of the gentle art and his sketches are meant to appeal to bot-tom-fishers and fly-fisliers alike, dealing in humorous and descriptive fashion with most kinds of fresh-water angling. Mr Sheringham was the author, in conjunction with Mr Nevill Meakin, of a humorous fantasy, “The Court of Sacharissa,” which appeared early in 1904.

“Waves of Fate,” by E. Noble, is being published by Messrs Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh. Mr Noble showed some power in his “The Edge of Circumstance,” a story of the sea. Here- too he takes us at once on board ship, though lie does not keep us there—the title being aptly chosen for the poignant romance of a literary ship’s captain whose failure in the moment of peril darkens his life.

The long-anticipated volume by the late Professor W. Stanley Jevons is about to be published by Messrs Macmillan under the t-tle of “Tlhe Principles of Economics: A Fragment of a Treatise on the Industrial Mechanism of S'ociety, and other E'ssays.” Professor Jevons was only in his- forty-seventh year when lie was drowned while bathing at Bexhill in 1882, and “The Principles of Economics,” upon which he was then engaged, was to have been “the work of liis life.” It is now edited by Mr Henry Higgs, joint editor of the “Economic journal.” - At the time of his death Professor Jevons was also contemplating the publication of his scattered papers, and some of these are incorporated in the present volume, including those on “Richard Gantillon and the Nationality of Political Economy,” “The Future of Political Economy,’ and one “On the Pressure of Taxation,” dated March I'3, 1869, now printed for the first time.

Mrs Searle Grossman, of Auckland, has an article in the current “Empire Review” on I’ll© growth of & colonial sentiment. To the new generation- of colonists England is still the aMotherland,” but their most intimate affection is kept for the land of their birth. Personal experiences are a stronger influence than inherited traditions, and the “vision splendid” of Europe no longer occupies the foreground in the colonial mind. “"Our national character,” concludes Mrs Grossman, “is gradually differentiating itself from the English type. Australasians are certainly a more emotional and less reserved type than the English. Our public orators and writers declaim about ‘pur fair country’ in a sty}© that an Englishman would be apt to consider foreign and sentimental. In many traits we are akin to the Americans. We have the American ‘detachment of fueling/ American inventiveness and K>ve of novelty and progress; the greater freedom from conventions and conservatism, the Yankee mixture of shrewdness, sentiment and humour. The late G. W. Steevens called the Americans mercurialised Englishmen, and the saying applies to the new indigenous type of colonial. The New Zealander ivho at last visits the Old Country of his childish dreams finds himself almost a foreigner. He has become an alien in v the land of his forefathers, but in compensation he is no longer an exile in the land of his birth. The true colonial, however staunch an Imperialist lie may bo. feels that he has now a character, a status, and a country of liis own.”