LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1952, 23 July 1891, Page 39

LITERARY NOTES.

It is proposed to create a Chair of Assyriology at Oxford, and to invite Mr A. H. Sayce to occupy it for a period of five years, at an annual stipend of £150.

The Frankfurter Zeitung reports the discovery of a hitherto unknown essay of Goethe's on " The Comparative Anatomy of the Skulls of Mammals." Goethe was an ardent scientist, and much interest attaches to the paper, which is supposed to be of the date 1794. Professor Bardeleben is preparing it for publication.

A genuine literary find is announced by the Pall Mall Gazette in the shape of two unpublished MSS. by Thomas Carlyle. The one gives an account of a trip to Paris in 1851; the other is an unfinished novel entitled "Wotton Reinfred." The style? we are told, is wonderfully pure, and marked by none of the later Carlyle characteristics.

The editor of the Ladies' Home Journal has been at some trouble to work out the results of last year's dealings with MSS. submitted. Fifteen thousand two hundred and five MSS. in all were received, comprising 2280 poems, 1746 stories, and 11,179 miscellaneous articles. Of these 66, .21 and 410 were respectively accepted ; but of the last over 300 were especially solicited. Deducting these, then, we find that jjonly 197 contributions in all passed the editorial supervision,, or a little more than 1 per cent.

The prize of £200 offered by the Sunday School Union for the best story illustrating the evils of gambling has been awarded by the Rev._Oanon Barker to Mr A. Colbeck's "" The Fall of the StainclifEe's." It is but a 'Commonplace tale, however ; and Mr Percy Fitzgerald's lf Fatal Zero "—not to speak of half a score of other works of fiction — depicts the fateful consequences of the .vice in a much stronger and more vivid light. Prize stories, like prize , poems, seldom turn out prizes. A sign of the growing importance of the colonies is the greater attention being paid to us by both English and American magazines. The latest evidence of this is the publication of an Australian edition of Scribner's Magazine, number 5 of which reaohes us from the Central Press Agency, Sydney, who ar^ the publishers for the colonies. The number is replete with illustrations, while the |u«ual essentially {American tone of the articles is somewhat modified to meet the requirements of a colonial circulation. Thej£?entral Agency also sends us a copy of the Colonial Military Gazette, which should meet withsmuch acceptance among the volunteers of the colonies.

Mr Forrest's romance of "Eight Days," a Btoryof the Indian Mutiny— which has been running through . the Oornhill Magazine — is republished in' three volumes. The scene is laid ajb Khirzabad, and the eight days are', occupied with a succession of tragical incidents springing out of the treachery of the Nawab and the Sekunder Begum, and involving the,, sufferings and sorrows of the small Erglish colony, only five of whom escape with their lives. It is a powerful story, displaying an intimate knowledge of Indian .life, and bringing out, with terrible realism, the principal phases of the great rebellion. It is too prolix; the style is too parenthetical, and sometimes rough and careless ; but in its intense and overmastering interest these defects are easily forgotten.

M. Silas K. Hocking, whose story "For Light and Liberty " is now running in The Christian World, was the recipient the other day of an unsolicited testimonial to the popularity of his stories, which may interest some of his many readers. , A gentleman living near Huddersfield wrote to Mr Hooking that a poor man, who had procured Mr Booking's last work, told the story how he and his wife " got all ready to commence reading the other evening, by making up a good fire and pat on it the pan to boil the pig potatoes, then we sat comfortably round and I commenced to read aloud, and before I brpke off reading the potatoes were both boiled and roasted, besides the pan being crippled for life. Tell him the above, and he will be fully able to judge how we enjoyed the book."

The net revenue of the London Times must reach a big sum when it can afford to pay £30,000 a year in salaries to its correspondents. No leader writey receives less than £1000 a year, but he sis not allowed to contribute to any other publication. The Times Continental correspondents receive princely salaries. M. de Blowitz, the Paris correspondent, receives £3200 a year ; the Berlin and Vienna correspondents receive £2500 each ; the correspondents at Borne and St. Petersburg £2000 each ; Senhor Diaz, at Madrid, is paid £1000 ; Herr Julius Lux, at Brussels, £500; Mr Heinrich receives the minimum of £250f For comparison, the salaries of Parisian newspaper men may be given. Writers of the stamp of Wolff, of the Figaro, of Scholl, of " Saint Gtenest," and of Ignotus, command £2000 to £2400 a year from one morning journal, to which they furnish about three articles per week.