LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 1967, 5 November 1891, Page 38

LITERARY NOTES.

~&~ _ Bret Harte'a English publishers last year paid him £3000. There are 1125 characters in the 24 books that Charles Dickens wrote. Frau Charlotte Embden-Heine, who is still hale and hearty in spite of her advanced age intends publishing the letters addressed to her by her brother Heinrich Heine, the poet. An important work (says Mr Clement V. Shorter), called "La Fatica" (Fatigue) has been published by Messrs Treves, of Milan. If is by Professor Angelo Mosso, who is fast becoming one of the best-known physiologists of his days. The book professes to be nothing more than a study, but it is a most important one. Professor Mosso gives two examples of great intellects who succumbed to fatigue of the brain. The one is Quintino Sella, whose physician he was; the other is Oavour. Quintine Sella's health gave way in consequence of prolonged toil. Cavour, whose temperament was more than elastic, used to say that he should give way if he did not at times put his brains out to grass. When this became impossible, he died. The prize system seems to have little reason to boast of its children. A prize poem has long been a synonym for mediocrity. I never heard of a prize play that attained success ; nor do prize novels bear a fragrant record. The futility of the system has recently received another demonstration in Mr Grant "Allen's prize story, "What's Bred in the Bone," which won the £1000 offered by the proprietor of Tit Bits for the best novel sent in tinder certain conditions. If it were the best, how bad must have been the others 1 Mr Allen's is luite unworthy of his reputation ; the plot is melodramatic, the characters are impossible, the "atmosphere" is unwholesome. On his part the lOOOgs was easily earned ; whether on the publisher's part they were well spent is quite another th ng. I don't know that anyone would be the_wdrse for reading this prize novel, but lam quite sure that no one will be the better. Mr Clement K. Shorter says very justly of the late James Russell Lowell that he has been as an inspiration to the study of th© best literature. A very large number of young men have undoubtedly found that his 63says, " Among My Books " and 'My Study Windows," marked a very important epoch in their mental training ; that if Cariyle sent them to Goethe and Schiller, and Matthew Arnold to Heine and Marcus Aurelius, Mi Lowell sent them to Dante and Lessing, and perhaps, above all, to Cervantes. Possibly no one has introduced so many Englishspeaking students to the " Divine Comedy " in the original during the last 30 years as Lowell. It is certain that no one has introduced so many to "Don Qaixote" in Spanish. "If you wish to know what humour is," he says, " read • Don Quixote.' " It is the element in which, the whole story lives and moves and has its being ; it is no* where absent ; it is nowhere obtrusive. The most desply interesting contribution to Murray's for August is undoubtedly the simply- written account of " Two Visits to the West Coast of Connaught," by Miss Balfour, the sister of the Irish Secretary. This is what she saw at Inishkea: — " The head of the little bay, with its sandy beaob, is lined with miserable little hovels of the usual type. The doorways are so low that one has to stoop to get into them, while inside almost the only light cemes, blue and dim, down the chimneys, or rather holes that do duty as such. It is not easy to distinguish anything in the dusk of the interior, but there was not often much to distinguish. Chairs, tables, and beds were conspicuous by their absence; a rough bench, a stool or two, some straw, or a heap of rags in a corner, usually making up all the furniture ; while a single room provided shelter, not merely for the whole family, but for all the live stock of which i^ was possessed. Outeide not a vestige of green was visible anywhere, the surroundings being of a uniform grey t drab tone."