LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2007, 11 August 1892, Page 45

LITERARY NOTES.

Lord Tennyson, it is said, makes it a constant practice to employ a rhyming dictionary when writing a poem.

Miss Olive Schreiner has sent to London the MS of a new novel, as well as a volume of South African sketches, for publication in England.

Mr Stanley Lane-Poole, who has been engaged upon the catalogue of the coins of the Great Moghuls in the British Museum, will write the volume on Aurangzib for the "Kulers of India" series.

Messrs Longma/i and Co. will publish immediately a new edition of Professor Max Muller's lectures on "India: What Can it Teach Us?" which were delivered at Cambridge to the candidates for the Indian Civil Service.

A movement is on foot to erect a memorial in some conspicuous position in London in honour of the late Lord Lytton, and a committee has been formed to carry out the project. Lord Salisbury is prominent amongst those who are interesting themselves in the matter. At a recent book sale in Boston, Mass., the first edition of Poe's " Tamerlane," described sis " a little dingy 40-page book," was sold for L'.)7o. The only other copy of this edition known to exist is in the British Museum, but it is minus the original cover. The general notion seems to be that girls of from 16 to 20 form the main audience of the novelist. But I' am inclined to think (Edmund Gosse remarks) that the real audience consists of young married women, sitting at home in the first year of their marriage. They find themselves without any constraint upon their reading; they choose what they will, and they read incessantly. It is now considered in bad taste to employ French for anything which can be equally well expressed iv our own language. Fashion has turned the tables. We discard French ; the Parisians adopt English. One can hardly pick up a French novel or newspaper which is not plentifully sprinkled with English — sometimes pure English, sometimes intentionally modified Eaglish, sometimes English curiously transformed through ignorance. In the Boston Journal is a little anecdote toM by Robert Barrett Browning to a Boston visitor. He said his father was greatly amused at what an English friend had related to him on returning home from a visit in Boston. He said he was stopping at one of the best hotels in tho city, and, retiring early one night, found himself unable to sleep, owing to myßterious, doleful noises in a room near by. Calliug a boy he impatiently asked what was the cause of the disturbance. " Oh, sab 1 oh, sah I that is the Browning Club, just reading Browning, sah I That is all, sah 1 " The majority of the novels of to-day are written by ladies. Of these one of the best known and most succassful is Miss Braddoh. A romantic story is told of her first book, " Lady Audley's Secret." A magazine called " Robin Goodfellow," a feature of which was to be a new novel, had been started. At the last moment a difficulty arose in regard to this story, and it was feared thab the publication of the periodical would have to be postponed. What was to be done 7 Miss Braddon heard of the difficulty, and offered to write the story. "There is no time," replied the publisher. " How long could you give me ? " asked Miss Braddon. " Until tomorrow morning." "At what time t>morrow morning?" "If the first instalment were on my table to-morrow morning," he replied, indicating by his tone and manner the utter impossibility of the thing, "it would be in time." The next morning the publisher found upon his table the opening chapters of " Lady Audley's Secret." " Good English for Beginners " is the suggestive title of a 246-page book by Thomas J. Haslam, issued from the press of Eason and Son, Limited, Dublin. As its name imports, it i 3 an easa.j of considerable elaboration upon the best method of acquiring elegance in style as regards the English language. " Study good authorities, and read well-written books," says the author, aud there is much common-sense in the advice. The ruling principle which underlies Mr Haslam's work, in short, is that, supposiug a student to have acquired the fundamental rules of English composition to stark with, the most effectual plan 10 pursue is to read and study the method of construction used by the mrst polished authors. It is here that the difficulty commences, for the young student, still uninformed and groping in partial darkness, miy not know where to turn for literary models. At this point Mr Haslam steps in, and after a few pages of general information, didactic so far a-3 his subject goes, he promptly proceeds Lo bring forward his examples. Many writers upon English construction begin with Addison as the most polished model in our language. Some of them begin and cad with Addison, as if there were no other elegant writer in Britain, and, indeed, the present author is so much impressed with the value of the eighteenth-century essayist as to devote 26 pages to him. Mr Haslim begins, however, with Bacon, and he carries his followers with him through the styles, natural or the result of study, assumed by Jeremy Taylor, Milton, Clarendon, Bunyan, the garrulous Defoe, the vigorous Swift, the direst and simple Goldsmith, the ponderous and often < gotistical Johnson. By turns the reader is introduced to Gibbon, with his stately phraseology, and Burke, whose rhetorical power is remarkable in an eloquent statesman who spoke so frequently that he mutt sometimes have lacked the leisure for careful preparation. Scott, who wrote so quickly and so readily that he rarely needed to revise, is given as an example of modern date ; as. are also Macaulay, Freeman, Froude, Kingsley, William Black, and numerous other writers. Tne examples are well chosen, the comments aro sensible, and the book altogethir justifies its purpose and its title.