LITERARY GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1747, 30 August 1905, Page 22

LITERARY GOSSIP.

The latest addition to Macmillan and Co.’s “English Men of Letters” series is a life of Edward Fitzgerald by Mr A. C. Benson. Though the man who made Omar K hayyam’s ohilosophy of life a modern vogue was one who loved retirement and personally shunned celebrity, there is no admirer of his work who will not be pleased to know more about him. Mr Benson’s work is more compact than Mr Thomas Wright’s biography of Fitzgerald and is favourably reviewed by all the leading British literary journals.

“The Complete Golfer” by Harry Vardon (Methuen and Co.), is a comprehensive and entertaining handbook to the game written by one of the best players in the world, and is characterised by modesty as well as literary ability. It is also amply illustrated.

In a just and happy State, the warEorses are taken to drag the ploughs afield.

A brave man in victory weeps, as at a funeral, for the foes whom he has slaughtered. Where troops have been quartered, the crops are thorn and brambles, and in the track of great armies follows a plague of lean years. Leave things alone and there will be no need of these disasters. The best charity is letting alone. The people without pressure would peacefully fall back into their natural places.

n>m “The Saying© of Lao-tze” translated from the Chinese by Lionel Giles.

Four more sections of the “Oxford English Dictionary” are announced. They present the same qualities of profound philological research as previous numbers, and leave nothing that is quaint or interesting in the history of English words for subsequent workers to garner.

The following under the heading “The Child of the Infinite” is from a recently published American book of verse by Charles G. D. Roberts. Sun, and Moon, and Wind, and Flame, Dus:. ,nd Dew, and Day, and Night— Ye endure. Shall I endure not, n i 'ourii so fleeting in your sight? Ye return. Shall I return not, Flesh, or in the flesh’s despite? Ye are mighty. But I hold you Compassed in a vaster might.

Mr Swinburne’s novel “Love’s Cross Currents” is now republished by Messrs Qhatto and Windus, and, judging by the notices which appear in late English files is much more favourably regarded now than when first published many years ago. It appeared then under another name, and was thought little of. Mr Swinburne of to-day is on a literary pinnacle, which makes a diffferenoe.

A book of interest to persons engaged in the work of bookkeeping and who feel curious about'the evolution of their profession from its most remote British beginnings is “A History of Accountancy and Accountants” by Richard Brown.

“Grove’s Dictionary of Music,” which long since took its place as one of the most classical and comprehensive British works on its subject, is now brought up to date in a new edition (Macmillan and Co.).

The “Letters of Queen Victoria,” edited by Mr A. C. Benson and Lord

Esher, will be published by Mr Murray about the beginning of next year.

There are already in existence a huge number of text cooks on elementary experimental science A new volume, which teachers will probably find full and instructive, is shortly to be published by Blackie and 00. The authors are Messrs W. M Heller, 8.5.0.. Science Inspector in Ireland, and E. G. Ingold, late scholar of Trinity College, Oxford. The book i* described as “the results of fifteen years’ practical l experience in schools of all grades.”

In new fiction, “The House of Cards,” by John Heigh, published by Macmillan and Co., is described ly the ‘Times” as “a clever book, which sets the ideals of the past beside those of the present.” It is a story of American life during the Civil War.

For those who are not too modern for the methods of a somewhat old-fashioned writer and like stories of Scots life with its polemical element well to the fore, “A Daughter of the Manse,” by Sarah. Tytler, ought to be good reading.

A story of a quiet domestic and perhaps somewhat prosy turn is Katherine Tynan’s ‘‘Fortune's Favourite.”

The recent taste for tale® of Welsh life, with their village politics and almost invariable sectarian element, is catered for in “The Conflict of Owen Prytherch” by W. M. Gallichan. The story is readable and well told, and withal is full of human interest.

The archaeological work of Dr Flinders Petrie has been recorded in many books fascinating to those who study the civilisations >of the past. A new work on “Research in Sinai” by. the same author is shortly to be published.

A collection of Lord Byron’s private opinions on men and matters has been collected by Mr W. A. Lewis Bettany from the poet’s works and letters and is published by Mr Murray.

In the course of the recent unsuccessful application for the exemption of the Shakespeare Museum at Stratford froip rates, at the Warwich Quarter Sessions, Mr Sidney Lee was asked : “Do you think that any appreciable proportion of these (30,000) visitors are stimulated to spend a smiling for a copy of Shakespeare’s works, instead of spending it at the public-house ?” The opposing counsel said in his speech: “Anne Hathaway’s Cottage was really an excellent national sideshow, but there was really nothing in it. Anne herself played but a secondary part in Shakespeare’s life. She was only his wife, and would not write or assist him in his writings.”

Discussing what sailors sometimes read, a writer in the “Book Monthly” says:—“l have a very dear remembrance of a certain ‘tramp’ master, who, if a prize had been offered for such knowledge, would Jiave carried it off from almost any ’Varsity man, for classic history as it appertains to the shores of the Mediterranean in particular, and especially ancient Greek myth and legend. He was constantly in the Black Sea trade, and nothing delighted him better than to have a passenger—as he did have at times to whom he could act as a cicerone, from the eastern end of the Bosphorus to the Pillars of Heracles. Everything would he reeled off in turn, spiced by a seaman’s phrasing, and touched with hi® North-country burr.”

The following hitherto unpublished letter of Robert Bunas, addressed to R. Ainslie, under date November 1, 1/80, appears in a recent issue of the Glasgow “Weekly Herald” :—“I had written you long ere now could I have guessed Where to find you, for I am suie you have more good sense than to _ waste the precious days of vacation time in the dirt of business and Edinburgh. Wherever you are, God bless you, bless, and lead you not into temptation, but deliver you from evil. I don’t know if 1 have informed you that I am now appointed to an Excise Division, in the middle of which my house and farm lie. In this I was extremely lucky. Without ever having been an Expectant, as they call their Journeyman Exciseman, I was directly planted down to all intents and purposes an officer of Excise, there to flourish and bring forth fruits, worthy of repentance. 1 know how the word Exciseman, or, still more opprobrious, Gauger, wiU sound in your Ears. I, too, have seen the day when my auditory nerves would have felt very delicately on this subject, but a wife and children are things which have a wonderful power in blunging these kind of sensations. Fifty pounds a year for life and a provision for widows and orphans you will allow is no bad settlement for a Poet.