LITERATURE.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXIX, Issue 4246, 29 October 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

THE LATEST ENGLISH HOOKS—AUTHORSHIP, SCOI'E, AND INTENT. (From the London Correspondent of the New York Herald.) London, August 1, 1874. The reprinting of our old English dramatists has been going on for some time with vigor, and Mr. Pearson's series now includes the. Dramatic Works of Thomas Heywood, whom Charles Lamb, the long unheeded herald of this revival of an almost forgotten but most valuable branch of our literature, called "A prose Shakespeare." This work, in six volumes, is one which will-naturally be found only in literary collections, by the side of the Dekker collection which was published last year. The publication of Heywood's plays was undertaken by the Shakespeare Society in 1812, but it only proceeded as far as the production of four dramas. The present edition comprises twenty-three, which are probably only those most worthy, of being retained in perpetual memory, for he wrote, arranged, and owned to having had a hand in 220 dramas, in 16G3, and got through an immense quantity of other literary work in addition. The historical plays, "Edward 1V.," and "If you know not riie you know nobody"—the latter a study of the early days of Queen Elizabeth—and a fine burst of patriotism apropos of the Spanish Armada, are the most interesting in some senses, but the domestic plays are sometimes exceedingly beautiful, with the charm that is of all time. The masques and mythological dramas, in which Heywood sought his materials from the Greek mythology, are rather wearisome, though they are very graceful. His best work is "A woman killed with kindness ;" but that is known outside special studies of this kind, and is, indeed, described by Mr. Symond3, whose judgment' most scholars will accept, as the finest bourgeois tragedy of our. Elizabethan literature. The language of this dramatist is singularly easy and devoid of the " quips" which frequently render the reading of seventeenth, century literature unremuneratively troublesome. ROHLF3 AND WISWOOD IIEADE. There has been a good deal.of disputing about the authenticity of a new book of travel which was extensively advertised through the well-known medium of the puff preliminary. This is "Dr. Gerhard Kohlfs' Adventures in Morocco and Journeys Through the Oases of Dran and Taflet." We really do know very little about the Empire of Morocco, and Kohlfs' name as a great traveller created a preliminary interest in the book, which was not, however, increased for those who. were acquainted with Mr. Winwood Reade's notion of ! introductions by the announcement that Dr. Kohlfs was to be presented to the public under the auspices of the author of " The Martyrdom of Man." We remembered the "African Sketch Book," and we did not forget the introduction to "The Heart of Africa"— Mr. Keade's latest and mo3t unsatisfactory performances. Out came Kohlfs' book, and its exterior alono was most discreditable. Carelessness is too mild a term for its putting together, and slovenliness best describes its editing. A wretched, clumsy translation of the disjointed contents of several notebooks, which had been used, in their native German, in sundry periodicals, without any rearrangement, and prefaced by a few page 3 written by Mr. Winwood Beads, and which contained two flagrant errors, one of geography—he places the "African Sahara" on the eastern side of the Egyptian Valley, and one of fact —he assumes the English public to be in utter ignorance concerning the Grand Sherif of Wazan, whereas Miss Perriertoldus all that was needful and more than was pleasant to know about him in her " Winter in Morocco." Such did the long unexpected work prove to be. People could not believe it, and they said it must be a tramped up compilation from Pcterman's Journal. Revision or endorsement from the author, it could have had none ; he is exploring the Libyan Desert. ' It seems, however, that the book, such as it is, is genuine, but that Dr. Kohlfs, like many intrepid and accomplished travellers, has no literary ability whatever, and has been so unlucky as to meet his match in his translator. Notwithstanding these great drawbacks, the book is valuable, because the traveller has really gone further into the unknown country, which is so near to Europe, and is still so deep a mystery to Europeans, than any one else has done. Hithorto we have had little except popular sketches of the coast towns and their inhabitants, but the German physician and traveller, having adopted the dres3 and the faith of the Moors, entered the service of the late Sidtan as surgeon, after sundry strange adventures before he reached Fez; resided there for some time, and afterwards crossed the Atlas and the whole country behind the range into Algeria. He penetrated to all the chief towns in the interior, and indeed made the entire circuit'of Morocco. His description of the fierce fanaticism of the people is very startling, and his own adventures are interesting.

~ A TOLERABLE TRANSLATION. A successful translation of a work by Victor Hugo is a feat on which no one has hitherto been in a position to be congratulated. Perhaps the very worst translation that ever was executed was that of "L'Homme Qui Rit," which appeared under the quite inappropriate, indeed incomprehensible title, "By Order of the King," in the Gentleman's Magazine. At length, however, there is a good translation of the most difficult of all French prose. It is Mr. Frach Lee Benedict's version of " Quatre "Vingt Treize," advertised as by that gentleman, whose novels are much liked in England, and Mr. Hain Friswell. This is a collaboration which it is difficult to understand, Mr. Friswell not being remarkable for ability in any way, and certainly possessing no beauties of style wherewith .to invest a rendering of. Hugo's fantastic ruggedness and highflown sentiment. The experiment is, however, really successful—indeed, the translation has only one fault—too close adherence to the interjectional style of the original in portions whose characteristic features are not strengthened thereby, but, on the contrary, exaggerated in' consequence of the variance between the French ■and English modes of conveying intensity. "toono BROWN." It ia the dead season just now in point of serious literature, but there is a steady outpouring of novels, concerning which one wonders more and moro who are the people who read and who are the-people who wiite them. The most interesting announcement is that of a serial by Mr. William Black, to commence next month in the C'ornhill Magazine under the title, " The Three Feathers." There has been an absurd fuss made about this title, in which some profound persons pretended to discover a subtle intention to bring loyalty into disrepute, by naughty revelations anent the Prince of Wales. This guess, which implied an absolute ignorance of Mr. Black's previous works and position in literature, actually " got in the papers" liko Mr. Vincent Crummle's bit of biography, and has been solemnly refuted, with an announcement that " The Three Feathers " is merely the sign of a country inn; which would have occurred to most people. The publication of " Young Brown " in three-volume form has afforded the public a fair opportunity of estimating that work justly. The editor of the (JornUill used his discretionary powers somewhat arbitrarily in the course of the serial publication of the story. Somo shallow and conventional criticism having been directed against the earlier numbers, the later ones were curtailed, much to the injury of a fiction which was admirably constructed as well as brilliantly written. In the preface to the complete edition the author, who proves to be identical with the writer of that cleverest of all modorn political novels, . " THE MEMBER FOE TAWS," has an opportunity of discussing the purpose of the work and the spirit in which it was received by opposite sections of literary opinion. This preface is a remarkable piece of writing—as forcible as anything within our knowledge, admirably temperate, and strictly true. The author contends that the exhibition of wickedness in high places is a fitting task for the novelist who purposes to impress upon the public mind a comprehension of grave social abuses, becatttSßiWlS in the exalted spheres of our social system that such things impress, not in the ordinary milieu. He enforces his view by the example of Swift, who laid the scene of his political satiro in Liliput,_but that of hia

social invective in Brobdingnag, because the social vices of greed, selfishness, and uncleanness, could be mads so much the more revolting by being perpetrated by huge persons. The novel in its present form is achieving a marked success ; and people are asking for " The member for Paris," which, though its ' exceeding cleverness and shrewd insight were discerned by the small number of discriminating readers among those who form a novelistic public, did not acquire popularity in the library-demand and drawing-room-gossip sense ; but "it is bidding fair for it now, retrospectively. " Young Brown" is the only remarkable novel of the day. WEAK WORK BY "WOMEN! Mrs. Oliphant has written four within two years. It is not surprising that only two should have been worth reading. Her last, "For Love and Life," is weak and strained, quite wanting in the quaint freshness of her former style, and a mere hash of her former incidents. Mrs. Craik, the patentee of goody fiction of a peculiar school—the school whose admirers ■ verily believe that* John Halifax was a gentleman and " The Head of the Family," an estimable and agreeable personage—has just produced a work called "My Mother and I," which is a perfect specimen of the profit and impunity attaching to certain orders of humbug. In this case it is the piou3, decorative order which is in evidence. Between the harm which lively pictures of society which is out of their reach is calculated to do novel reading young ladies of the middle classes and the harm which books in which self-consciousness is exalted into a virtue of the first-class, and its methods are inculcated as a high art, are certain to do them, because self-consciousness is perfectly within their compass, people who know anything of human nature are not likely to hesitate. The knowledge of human nature is not, however, a strong point with the perhaps rather silly, possibly a trifle individuals, who conduct the goody branch of the literature of Good 'Words. jf great many shams, literary.and social, want squashing, but none is more harmful than that which represents the most natural and simple feelings, the easiest, most cvery-day duties of humanity, in' an 'artificially heroic light—a kind of sham of which Mrs. Craik is a habitual exhibitor. "My Mother and I" contrives, under a suave, quasi-poetic exterior, to convey as false an estimate of the relations of mother and child from the healthy and common sense point of view as any highly-spiced narrative of the maratre school, and one which is, of course, incidentally more dangerous, because more attractive, and addressed to a larger and more susceptible audience, who hold the author to be at least semi-inspired. The latest IMITATOR 01" GEORGE ELIOT is really funny. She is Mrs. Campton Reade, and she treats us to her version of " Middlemarch" metaphysics, "Romola" romance, and Felix Holt philosophy and political economy, in a novel entitled "Rose and Rue" (though why so called iiot Mrs. Niekleby herself could discover), which is a truly delicious- sample of pompous nonsense. We have a metaphysical disquisition between a farmer's daughter and a Wesleyan parson, the incidents being supposed to take place in a Dorsetshire farm-house upwards of fifty years ago, when the science of metaphysics was, as Dr. Jenkinson said of the world, "in its infancy," even in the schools ; and we have the advanced social theories of the last decade freely advanced 'in an extraordinary jargon, and in sentences ranging between twenty-four and forty-seven lines each, in a district primitive to the point of barbarism —indeed, beyond it—to the extent of the combination of farmer and highwayman in the same individual. "Rose" is presumably (we don't get beyond presumption) Miss Tryphena Fawke, the heroine who falls in love with the gentleman of liberal views, whom her father lias shot in the shoulder in his double capacity of agriculturist and highwayman. The Wesleyan parson is one Acts Latchet, and a copy, anything but to'the life, of George Eliot's Dissenters, but with a shameless mingling of vice and profanity in him, which we prefer to regard as perfectly original on the part of the author. It is not surprising to observers of current criticismand the gullibility of the reading public to find that this daring and glaring mimicry is achieving a certain amount of success. One "organ" •tells the people who are making out their lists for Mudie's that Mrs. Reade's novel is. ""able and vigorous," and that there is " an attractive novelty in being transported to a Dorsetshire farmhouse fifty years ago." Anybody who knows what a -Dorsetshire farmhouse and its habitual pursuits and conversation are at present, will no doubt be in a better condition to appreciate this novelty. The

NEW WEEKLY JOUBNAL, called the World, is the leading literary event of the day. The World is not a newspaper in the ordinary sense —that of Keuter and reporting—but it is a newspaper in the sense of putting the latest novelties in the worlds of politics, Bport, fashion, social proceedings, art, drama, gossip, and literature in the most piquant possible form before its readers. A hand-mirror held up to catch the passing sunflash would not be a bad image by which to describe the handsome new-born child of our prolific time. But though -itis as bright and as present and as recurrent as a flash, its actualite is of the sincere and stringent kind. It is searching, vivid, and mist-dispelling as light should be, and it flashes upon the literature of the day in an exceedingly satisfactory fashion. It is not beyond hope that criticism may become reformed to some extent by the example of this young but certainly intrepid wielder of the paper-knife, to which neither fear not favor is known. While London is. welcoming an addition of indisputable valuo to its literary resources, Paris is similarly engaged. An attempt is being seriously made at last'to elevate PARISIAN JOURNALISM to a level with ours, by the establishment of a weekly newspaper, conducted by genuine men of letters. The political principles of the now candidate for public favor aro indicated by its title, Lea Esclios dc V Alsace-Lorraine, and its scope and pretensions may be estimated by the fact, that the celebrated collaborateurs,, MM. Erchmann and Ohatrian, are members of the committee of management. senile ! Among the announcements of forthcoming books is one which is regarded with regret rather than anticipation. It is the announcement that Earl Russell is about to publish a volume entitled "Recollections and Suggestions of Public Life : 1813-1873." The mere juxI taposition of the dates is melancholy. But there is no teaching Earl Russell that he is " played out," and that the public is tired out.