LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1874, 21 October 1887, Page 35

LITERARY NOTES.

Mis? Braddqn has arranged to write exclusively for Messrs Long and Co., of Sheffield, during the next three years. A copy of the Mazarin, or Gutenberg Bible, the first book printed with metal movable types, has been sold in London for £2650. It would appear from the Thackery letters now appearing in "Scribner's Magazine" that the novelist received about £2500 for " Pendennis." The eloquent Red Indian woman known in connection with the Wild West show as " Bright Eyes " and in private life as Mrs Tibbies, was announced, at date of last advices, as about to commence a series of lectures in London on " The Wrongs of the North American Indians." Mdlle Louise Michell, the famous anarchist, will shortly appear before the French public as a poetess. Her volume of poems, entitled "Les Oceaniennes," is now in the press. Louise Michell in her girlhood wrote a poem that she dedicated to Victor Hugo, who saw in it great promise, presenting her in return with a copy of some of his own works, with his autograph inscribed on the fly leaf. If you have any information which a reporter wants, surrender it instantly. He will have it anyway. If he does not get it from you, he will get it elsewhere, and the first man to whom he will go for it will be to your deadliest enemy. Does this seem an idle boast ? " Doctor," said General Grant, when he finished his memorandum of last instructions and gave them to his physician, " keep this to yourself. If a single other person sees it, the newspapers will get it."_A. E. Watrous, in " Lippincott's Magazine." Sir John Lubbock's "Pleasures of Life' is a volume of addresses, including that unfortunate one on the "Choice of books" which let loose on a groaning world such a lot of pedantic nonsense last year. They are most pious utterances, full of admirablyselected quotations and exhortations to contentment with one's lot— very much, in short, as one can fancy the blameless Telemachus delivering to the Ithica Young Men's Literary Institute, with Penelope smiling fondly at her darling from a front bench, and Ulysses yawning hideously at her side. But really they are far too exemplary to be laughed at.— World. All painstaking writers of fiction gather their facts, anecdotes, and " local colour " from whatever sources are open to them (see the list in Charles Reade's diary of the " men whom I want to talk to " when he was meditating " It is Never too Late to Mend," or his remark, " A sailor is a live book of travels," in " Love me Little, Love me Long' 1 ), and in many cases it must be hard to draw the line between merely supplying an author with materials, and actually taking part in his constructive work. Cruickshank lived and died in the firm belief that he had written "Pickwick"; and Caddell told Lockhart that Constable's vanity boiled over 50 much at this time, on having his suggestions (about " Kennilworth ") gone into by Sir Walter Scott, that when in his high moods he used, to stalk up and down his room, and exclaim, •< By , I am all but the author of the ' Waverley Novels ' ! "—Saturday Review.