LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1951, 11 April 1889, Page 37

LITERARY NOTES. -

The New York World intends to. purchase a house in Washington, and instairthere ; presently one of its principal journalists, who ■ will be given a handsome allowance for entertaining. This is said to be a recognition of the fact that over the dinner "table the greatest secrets of State are most often- discussed and divulged. Guy de Maupassant, who is at present in Algiers finishing a new novel entitled " Strong as Death," is about to make an excursion to Central Africa, together with his faithful valet • Frangois. Both are going to don the garb of the natives, and wrapped in the, black robe of the Arab, visit the home of the Ohaambas and of the Touaregs. A little book of great interest. to all lovers of Burns will soon be published in Kilmar* nock, the town ' which gave the poet's first edition to the world. ( It will consist of a verbatim et literatim, copy of the famous holograph MSS. acquired byr the trustees of the Kilraarnock Museum early last year, and will show all the alterations and emendations made by Burns on those documents during the time they were in his possession, together with his peculiarities iof> spelling. We (Athenseum) are sorry to .receive the following news from a lady who- has been making a sketch of Shelley's villa near Spezzia — "You never saw sucha'mess as they ar** making of the beautiful ilex wood above Shelley's house, cutting down all the trees and making tidy prim walks with urn's stuck at the corners, and all sorts of garden shrubs, . quite out of character with, the place* planted o> ? er it. Shelley's house is itself to.be tidied up and plastered before long, I believe, so I was just in time, and have copied every old weather-stain on it with great care." The last poet laureate-maker was the late Lord Houghton. On Wordsworth's death, Peel asked Monckton Milnes who ought to bo the new laureate. " There can be no doubt," said Milnes; "Tennyson is the man." "I am ashamed to say," replied Peel, ",that, buried as I have been in public life, I, have never read a line of Tennyson's. Send me two or three of his poems." Milnes selected 11 Locksley Hall " and " Ulysses.". Peel was delighted with both, but especially .with " Ulysses," and promptly made the, appointment." •• Uncle Piper of Piper's Hill " is, to the best of our knowledge (says the Spectator), only the third work of fiction possessing remarkable merit that has come to us from the antipodes. The first of this trio is, Marcus Clarke's powerful and painful story, " For the Term of his Natural Life," which can never be forgotten by anyone who has read it; not even by the veriest' glutton of fiction, or the hardest-worked reviewer to whom the many-coloured parcels of three volumers are either personal enemies, or " all in the day's work," according to his humour. The writer might have written finer, novels had he lived, but nothing stronger than that terrible story of wickedness, cruelty, crime, and despair, with its vivid pictures of the physical wonders of a country then almost entirely unknown to readers in England. A Washington correspondent says that Mrs Burnett probably earns more money than any women in the world, and gets a higher price for her work. Her income this year will be from 50,000d0l to 60,000d0l In the first place, she receives a percentage of the receipts from the play of "Little Lord Fauntleroy," which is now being presented by four companies in England and one in the United States, and two more are being organised to travel to this country. Her weekly revenues from the play in England vary from 800iol tp 1,200d0l and from themariagers of the Broad way Theatre, in New York, she gets about 500dol a week. Fifteen hundred dollars a week is not an exaggerated estimate of her receipts from this play alone, while her revenues from the sa'« of the book are large.