LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1903, 24 July 1890, Page 36

LITERARY NOTES.

In 1873 the copyright of the song " Simonthe cellarer" was sold for £409 ; "Who will o'er the downs "for £396; and "The hardy Norseman " for £344. - Mrs C. Milon has lately won a prize of £150 offered by Dr Oatison, of Chicago, for the best biography of a distinguished woman. Mrs Milon is a Swede, and chose for her subject her countrywoman, Fredrika Bremer.

The most extensively read book in Spain at present is said to be the Bible. They cannot, it is stated by a reliable authority, print Bibles fast enough at Madrid to meet the great demand which kas arisen for them within recent times in Spain and Portugal.

Le Petit Journal of Paris claims a daily issue of over 600,000. The Daily Telegraph's half a million has passed into a proverb. Lloyd's Weekly News has an .issue of 621,000. The Berliner Modenwelt, a semi-monthly paper of fashions, circulates 600,000 copies, 250,000 in German and the balance in.other languages. Lady Charlotte Schreiber has written a beautifully illustrated work on "Foreign Fans." It will shortly be published by Mr Murray, and will form a valuable companion to her earlier volume on " English Fans." Lady Charlotte attained considerable success as a writer, many years ago, in a very different department of literature. As Lady Charlotte Guest she was known as the author of a particularly valuable and interesting work on Wales. How Mr Gladstone finds |time to write leaders, as well as articles in the reviews, may well puzzle the ordinary journalist and excite his envy. The leader on " The PittRutland correspondence," in The Speaker of April 5, is an able defence in three columns of the Irish Parliament of the latter parb of the last century against Mr Pitt's charges. The artiole is based on the reoently-published volume of correspondence between Mr Pitt and the Duke of Rutland.

No one oan say why we are dropping the old use of the subjunctive, so that to write "if I be," instead of "if I am," is coming to be considered a little pedantic ; or whence comes the habit of substituting the accusative for the nominative in phrases such as " it w me"; or who sanctioned the ungram matical use of the pronoun " whose " after a neuter noun, as in " the field whose grass is green " ; or who began to hyphen qualitative words with nouns and verbs, and write " he was a half -believer," or "he bought-up all the corn," an important though scarcely noticed innovation ; or who is responsible for the [growing tendenoy to quote a man's words as he said them, without reference to a previous governing verb, as in " Mr Parnell decided that the Land Bill ;is wrong in prinoiple."— Spectator. BOOKWORM RAVAGES. In "Kirby and Spenoe's Entomology" a curious fact is stated about the bookworm (Anobiam pertinax) on the authority of M. Peignot, a French librarian. In a public library but little frequented one of these destructive insects bored in a straight line through 27 folio volumes 1 On passing a string through the perfectly round hole made by it these 27 volumes could be [raised at once. From the distinguished botanical traveller, Mr F. W. Burbidge, 'curator of the Trinity JOollege Botanical Gardens, Dublin, the Graphic has received a living specimen of a bookworm which Mr Burbridge caught en flagrant delit of ♦' gnawing up things like the devil I " It is rather remarkable that nntil the last few years scarcely anyone had ever seen a real- live bookworm, although its depredations have caused many a heartburn on the part of collectors. Sir Henry Ellis, of the British Museum, had only seen one, and that in a volume of the Spectator. A fearfuHooking monster is depicted under the title of bookworm in Hooke's Micrographia, 1685. Mr Burbridge's specimen belongs to the genus Anobium, of whioh there are several species. One of them attacks prints and pictures* and even oil paintings, the latter probably from paste having been applied to the canvas. In one of the Parliamentary reports on the state of the pictures in the National Gallery, it was stated that the fine picture of the " Raising of Lazarus " by Sebastian del Piombo, had been so attacked by the larvaa of an insect supposed to be the Anobium paniceum. Through Dr Waagen's efforts the pictures were afterwards watched and protected.

HOW SOMB POEMS WEBB WBITTEN.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox composed her little poem, " The Land of Nod," while rocking her baby brother to sleep in a cradle. Oowper wrote "John Gilpin's Ride" when be was under one of those terrible fits of depression so common to him. The poem, " The Falls of Niagara," was written by its author, J. G. 0. Brainard, the editor of a small paper in Connecticut. He wrote it under pressure, in response to a call for " more copy." General Lytle wrote " I am Dying, Egypt, Dying," on the night before his death. He had a premonition that he was going to die the next day. "After the Ball," the little poem whioh has made the name of Nora Perry known in the world of letters, was jotted down on the back of an old letter, with no idea of the popularity it wa3 to achieve in the pages of a noted magazine. Poe first thought of "The Bells" when walking the streets of Baltimore on a winter night. He rang the bell of a lawyer's house —a stranger to him --walked into the gentleman's library, shut himself up, and the next morning presented the lawyer with a copy of his celebrated poem. Thomas Moore, while writing "Lalla Rookh," spent so many months in reading up Greek and Persian works that he became an accomplished Oriental scholar, and people found it difficult to believe that its scenes ! were not penned on the spot instead of in a retired dwelling in Devonshire. " Old Grimes," that familiar " little felicity in verse," which caught the popular fancy as far back as 1823, was a sudden inspiration of the late Judge Albert G. Greene, of Providence, R.1., who found the first verse in a collection of old English ballads, and enjoying its humour, built up the remainder of the poem in the same conceit. — Amerioan Notes and Queries.

—In the good old times a little soap was OQOajionally takes internally as a medioine,