LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1970, 22 August 1889, Page 18

LITERARY NOTES.

(Fbom Oub Own Correspondent.) London, June 28. More than 20,000 copies of "Derrick Vaughan," Edna Lyall's new book, were sold the first week. The success of a reputation is indeed marvellous. Edna Lyall, as I suppose your readers know, is a Miss Bayley, who lives at Eastbourne. According to a local Sussex paper, " she works to some extent on principle. Her first is to think out a central figure as hero. She gives him his character and endows him with those qualities in which her thoughts can clothe him. Then she thinks out a story to fit the man. She makes just that series of events befall him which shall bring to light these qualities, and surrounds him with a life such as might naturally befall ' the imaginary man her mind has created, working up all the incidents to achieve a final result which, as in 'Donovan/ shall leave the world better for thinking that such men exist. Miss Bayley confesses to being an erratic worker, having no time for writing." Robert Louis Stevenson's new story has been issued by Messrs Cassell and Co. It is called " The Wrong Box," and purports to be written in conjunction with Lloyd Osborne, his stepson. Mr Lloyd Osborne is a naturalised American citizen, so that one rather suspects the appearance of his name on the cover is intended to proteot the book from piracy over the way, though Mr Stevenson is believed to have stated that his stepson's share in it was not inconsiderable. One recalls, however, that Max O'Rell, when publishing one of his books, got his office boy, an American citizen, to write a sentence, so that he might secure an American copyright, and then publish abroad the folly and gullibility of the so-called copyright law. DrLightfoofc, Bishop of Durham, has just republished, in book form, the essays on the work entitled " Supernatural Religion," which appeared in the Contemporary Review some 12 or 14 years ago. A great deal of the critioism in *' Supernatural Religion " is now somewhat antiquated ; a great deal also has become a part of the accepteo doctrine of the pulpit." Meanwhile, if only because the Bishop of Durham is one of the greatest of living English scholars, one must value his reprinted essays. Mr Christie Murray sailed by the Shaw, Savill boat a fortnight ago for Teneriffe, where he is to remain till the Aorangi picks him up and takes him on to Hobart. He begins his lecturing tour in Melbourne, and will be absent some eight months. Mr Robertson Smith, the well-known Biblical scholar and ex-professor of the Free Kirk of Scotland, is admirably qualified for his new post of professor of Arabic in Cambridge, to which he. has just been elected. The Free Kirkers have grown a little wiser since, in 1881, the Free Kirk Assembly removed him from his Hebrew Chair in New College, Edinburgh, because of his liberality in theological speculation. Things have changed since then. Ten years ago, Mr Robertson Smith travelled ia Arabia. He is an Aberdonian by birth. He is only 43. He studied at Aberdeen University, and at Bonn and Gottingen. Iv about two years after his removal from Edinburgh he found a welcome in Cambridge.