LITERARY NOTES.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 3262, 20 October 1897, Page 1 (Supplement)

LITERARY NOTES.

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN. Mr Anthony Hope, whose capital story “Phroso” appeared in serial form in the columns of this journal, has, says The Bookman, just finished a sequel to hia very popular novel, “ The Prisoner of Zenda.”

“Joan of An;" and “Mary Queen of .Scot are two historical characters indirectly responsible for the appearance of dozens of books. Mr Hay Fleming, of St. Andrews, has, I read, completed the first volume of an entirely new life of the unfortunate Mary. He has been engaged on the work for over two years, and tbo care lie has taken in compiling and arranging his matter may be seen by the fact that there are more than 1100 notes. The volume is to be published in London this mouth by Messrs liodder and Stoughton.

Jack Straw’s Castle, the famous hostelry at Hampstead which has been described V.’ith pen and pencil by Dickens, Thackeray; Du Manner and Lord Leighton, changed bands recently for A 51,500. A London paper notes the curious fact that an inscription on the lowest of the flight of steps leading to its main door records that it is on a level with the cross on the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral.

With reference to the death of Sir John Skelton, better known as a writer under his mini dc plume of “Shirley,” it is pointed out by The Boatman that his story “The Crookit Meg,” contributed by him to, Fraser’s Magazine sumo years ago, vras a distinct precursor of the Kailyard school, and had it come after Mr Barrie its reception would have been very different. But at that time the English public would not road dcots stories, and the Scots public took a very languid interest in them. Skelton was an intimate friend of Dante, Gabriel, Kosc-tti and J. L. Proudo. He was also a most enthusiastic defender of Mary Stuart.

A report is current in London that Mark Twain is about to write his autobiography. His now book, descriptive of his trip through Australia and Now Zealand, will bo issued this month in London.

Apropos to Murk Twain, a late number of the London Academy contains a very generous ahd enthusiast!;! eulogy of Mr Clemons, under the title “Mark Twain, Benefactor.” The writer looks upon Mark Twain as the literary progenitor of Rudyard Kipling. He’says ; Before Mr Kipling rose glowing in the East Mark Twain held the field. He was the ideal of masculine writers. There were no half-ways with his readers —either they swore by him through thick and thin, or unconditionally they cast him asidoi Probably no author has been so little read by women, although; ou the other hand, there was. hardly a boy in the English-speaking world who not have bartered his soul for Mark Twain’s corncob pipe as a relic. He did just what boys and elemental men like; he came straight to the point; he feared no one; and he esteemed laughter above all the gifts of God. Thus it was from twenty-five to a dozen years ago. But then, in the early eighties, Mark Twain’s old manner became changed. He abandoned his zest in lawless life and the records of his personal impressions in the serious places of the earth, and he turned to satire and romance. His sorrowing readers had only just perceived the melancholy truth when "Soldiers Three " appeared, in its quiet, blue-gray covers to mark the beginnings of a now sledgehammer pen and divert their grief. British India won j and tO-day Mr Hudyard Kipling is the ideal masculine writer, and his is the pipe that is coveted by boys and elemental men. He is a finer artist than Mark Twain, his sympathies are wider, his genius is more comprehensive, .and yet, when all bo said, the fact remains that Mark Twain is his literary progenitor.

Hero too is the English ■ writer’s tribute to those two niost delightful boohs, “ I'om Sawyer "and “Huckleberry Finn ” i

But Mark Twain did more than this. Not only did he offer broad comic effects and sagacious criticism of life, he passed on to add notable contributions to that mass of data concerning human nature which novelists and dramatists have been accumulating these many centuries. Tom Sawyer has been called the completest boy in fiction, and it would be hard so prove this praise at fault; and Hack Finn is surely immortal. It was said that in some of his poems nature took the pen from Wordsworth and wrote for him. In Huckleberry Finn it may bo said that natural man took the pen from Mark Twain and wrote for him. That great book, which is likely to remain the standard picturesque novel of America, is the least trammelled piece of literature. in the language. It is worthy to rank with Gil Bias.

Mrs Oliphant’s death ■ has, it is said, stimulated the demand for her works, a half-crown edition of which is selling well.

I read in the London Athenceum that an entirely now edition of Thackeray is to bo brought out shortly by Metsrs Smith, Eider and Co., who alone hold the complete Thackeray copyrights. Each volume will have an introduction and notes by Mrs Richmond Ritchie (Thackeray’s daughter), and each novel will be complete in one volume. Up to the present complete editions; in large type, of Thackeray’s works hafe been somewhat expensive for colonial book-buyers, and if the new edition be not too costly it ought to sell well out here. Mrs Ritchie’s biographical and other notes will bo specially welcome, for there is no writer as t > whose personality we are still so much, in the dark as the author of “Esmond.’’ The best book ou Thackeray up to the present is the biography in “The Great Writers ’* series (London • Walter Scott. Is 6d), by Messrs Herman Merivale and Frank Uarzials. There is also a monograph on Thackeray in Macmillan’s “ English Men of Letters ” series, by Anthony Trollope, but it is somewhat unsympathetic in tone.

Those who say that the popularity of Dickens is declining are wrong, if we may judge by the fact that the hew and expensive Gadshill edition (32 vets, at 6s each) is selling so well. It is an extremely handsome edition, with all the original illustrations, taken from a duplicate set of plates carefully preserved for some years by the publishers, Messrs Chapman and Hall. The Dickens copyrights' do not expire until 190 i. so that none of the cheap non-copyright editions can be completed until then. “The Gadshill” edition I can personally recommend as the best Dickens to date. It is somewhat expensive, but'of Scott, Dickens and Thackeray the faithful admirer should only have the beat editions. Better good editions of a few standard authors than a pile of ephemeral rubbish.

A novel which is having a great sale in the Old Country—l don’t know -whether it has yet reached the colonies is Mr Hitchens’ “ Flames." Mr Hitchens was one of the authors of “ The Green Carnation.’’ and bis “ Imaginative Man,” a morbid but singularly powerful novel, was recently reviewed in this journal. A leading character in “ Flames ” is a woman of the streets, and-lovers of the realistic—and nasty—will no doubt rush the book when it appears in a cheap colonial edition, as it will no doubt before long, in Heinneman’s Colonial Library.

Mr Hall Caine’s new story “The Christian," of which a lengthy review appeared in this journal last week, has been severely slated by certain English papers. The Daily Telegraph remarks:—

In “The Christian” Mr Hall Caine has surpassed all his previous failures in this direction. He has succeeded in slaking far beneath the level of the ancient Coburg (an allusion to the old transpontine drama of the -blood and thunder stamp) and has only touched bottom in the lowest deep of the penny novelette. Spurious sentiment, sham satire, ‘ faked 1 pathos, cheap morality, caricatured Christianity, meet us in every page. .

The Telegraph critic also takes Mr Hall Caine severely to task for what is called the bitter attacks on hospital nurses. The author however, is defended by a writer in The Literary World, who says : But is it true that Mr Caine intended any attack at all on nurses as a class ? And are we not too sensitive in these days to criticism of individuals who belong to classes ? If the novelist is to avoid taking his characters from the English middle and lower middle classes on the ground that, as this reviewer quaintly says, they “ have hitherto escaped such unjust and injurious usage,” it will be hard for him to continue at his trade. But has not much the same thing been said about Dickens? Yet his work survived, and still survives, when his reviewers’ diatribes have “ gone with last year’s snow." Meanwhile Mr Hall Caine can derive solid consolation from the fact that in the first ten days the sales of “ The Christian ” in England and America amounted to 05,000. The cheque of .£IO.OOO in anticipation of the English royalties must also have enabled Mr Caine to bear these rebukes philosophically. Mr George Du Manner’s last novel, “The Martian,” which has been so well received during its serial course in Harper’s Magatine, will be out here shortly in a cheap colonial edition, and I advise my readers to give an early order for a copy, for there is sura to bo a big run on the last book by the author of “ Trilby.” Like that work “The Martian” largely deals with literary and astistio life in

Paris. From Mr "W. Dean Howell’s review of the book in Harper's Weekly I clip the following paragraphs:—“The atmosphere of the book is that which Du Maurier has shown that ho loves best; it is much the same as that of Peter Ibbetson and of Trilby; it is a blend of botli; it is the air of a refined rather than a moralized Bohemia; it is all in art-land, loveland, comrade-land. People stand about and talk ; they dream and ache and thrill; but they do not act a great deal, and many of them do not arrive anywhere. The social j hilosophy is that of Thackeray’s novels, and is much averse to snobs, which it is assumed we all are, but need not be it we were very brave, and above the mean motives that actuate people in society. . . . In the meantime I think there are more agreeable people (mostly of gigantic stature) in The Martian, tnan there wore in Trilby ; and for me Barty Josselin is a more winning personality than even the heroine so widely known through that book. There is an unfailing charm in his character j he is lovable from the beginning to the end, and ouch as, loving him, you could wish him to. bo in most circumstances. His personal quality is less appreciable in his later than in his earlier life, in Ids prosperity than in his adversity; but that is inevitable. The story throngs with interesting figures.” C. Wilson, in “The N.Z. Mail.’