LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2009, 25 August 1892, Page 46

LITERARY NOTES.

A very giaceful compliment has just been paid to MiBS Hannah Lynch. Her novel of modern Greek life has been translated, and will be published in Athens shortly. Anothe r life of Cardinal Mam.ing is t romised for next year. It will be the work of Mr E. Sheridan Puvcell, aud will be in two volumes : one devoted to the Cardinal's Anglican, the other to his Catholic life. The publication of all Heinrich Heine's letters still preserved by the family, and not yet published, bas been authorised The letters are addressed to the poet's mother and to his si6ter Charlotte, and aie said to give the first true picture of his character. The great work on Persia, upon which Mr Georce Cuizon has been engaged for the past three years, is to consist of two volumes of 600 to 700 pages each, with 100 illustrations, 10 new maps, and statistical tables. The first edition of Mr Barry Pain's new book, "Stories and Interludes," ia already exhausted. How much does Mr Pain owe to Mr Andrew Lang for making him popular ? Few things really help a young author of talent more than a savage attack, which the public is apt to set down to jealousy. Mr Walter Besant is evidently of opinion that, it is not wise for the ordinary author to indulge in dreams of immortality for his work. " Immortality," he says, "in fact is limited, save for the very, veiy few. Happy is the man who can please or instruct his own generation ; happy he who can make them listen to him ; more happy still if he does not in the least trouble his head about posterity." Roberts Brothers have in active preparation, to follow tbeir beautiful library edition of Jane Austen's novels, the novels of Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, who may be said to have done for Scotland what Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth have respectively

' done for England and Ireland— left portraits, painted in undying colours, of men and women that will live forever in the hearts and minds of her readers^ Miss Ferrier died in 1854, and was almost the last of that literary galaxy that adorned Edinburgh society in the days of Scott, Jeffrey, Wilson and others. "Dorothy Wallis: an autobiography," which Messrs Longmans are just publishing in a six-shilling volume, is a book likely to make some stir. It starts with the imprimatur of Mr Walter Besant. A casual glance through its pages gives promise of disclosures regarding the terrible disillusionment and cruel hardships in store for young women who take to the stage for a living from ambition. The story is told in the form of letters. It gives Mr Besant an opportunity of once more dinning into unwilling ears the wrongs which our social system inflict on those of the feebler sex who have to engage in the struggle for subsistence. Mr Hamilton Aide, the author of "A Voyage of Discovery," just published by Harper and Brothers, is the son of a Greek diplomatist, and was born in England in 1839. He was educated at the University of Bonn, Germany, and was for some time an officer in the British army. He was the friend of Thackeray and the Brownings, and has written several successful books, chiefly works of fiction. In 1801 he accompanied Mr Henry M. Stanley on his lecturing tour in the United States, and the results of some of the observations which he made at that time are said to be embodied in his new story, which is cesciibed as a novel of American society. *" The superficial cleverness which gave vogue to Mix O'Rdl'd earliest production fails (says the American Literary Review) in its effect in this latest volume. We are conscious that we are getting from him the fame thing, b&aten thinner and with an air of laboured repetition , and it takes a corresponding effort on our part to even appear to be pleased with it. In " English Pharisees and French Crocodiles " he discusses various national types on both sides the Channel — Jacques Bonhomme and his hard-working Jacqueline, the thrifty French middle class, the snob — British and Gallic — criminals, the adminstration of justice, and the AngloSaxon formalist, piously singing, Were the whole realm of Nature mine, That were a tribute far too small, while be sedulously makes sure that the coin he fingers in his pockets is a three-penny bit, and not a sixpence. There are occasional bright hits throughout the book, but on the whole the admirers of Max O'Rell will do wisely to go back to "John Bull et Son Isle," and read it over again, rather than test their regard by the perusal of his latest book.