LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2010, 1 September 1892, Page 40

LITERARY NOTES.

Mr Rudyard Kipling's " Barrack , Room Ballads " are now in their tenth thousand.

How is ib that a somewhat debased parson, a shy, self-absorbed tutor, and a frivolous courtier, such as wore Herrick, Crashaw, and Oarew, could write lyrics which we have rarely touched, never surpassed, in the whole course of English literature ?— George Saintsbury. If the report of the librarian of the Tate Library at Streatham, just published, may be taken as an index to the reading of the dwellers in the villas of suburban London, novels, designated by the more dignified term of "prose fiction," 'hold the day, while theology and poetry are at zero. The essays in the Spectator of Addison and Steele, which it is fashionable aaiong unimaginative pedants to regard as " unapproachable," are not better than essays which may now and then be found in the modern Spectator, or in the Saturday Review, or in the National Observer, or in the Speaker, or in magazines such as Cornhill, Black wood, Macmillan's, Longman's, and Temple Bar, or in the monthly reviews. — National Review.

Mrs Humphry Ward has adopted the unusual course of replying to her critics. She prefaces the "popular" edition of her "History of David Grieve" with an open letter to her publisher in which she disposes of several of her critics by playing off the praise of one against the abuse of the other. The plan is not new, having been adopted by American authors some year 3 ago. Some good people think all reviewers of books should put their names to what they write. Why ? That they may be treated to such notes as the following, sent to a lady reviewer:— "Woman 1 Ten years ago you killed a book of mine by your cruel and unjust notice of it. I want you to know before you die that I have .watched you ever since, and that I shall watch you all your days. If there is any justice in this world, you will suffer for what you did to one who had never harmed you, and I shall see ib and be glad of it." Scott's *' Ivanhoe " has been published in a nea( and well-printed volume of 460 pages, by Frederick Warne and Co. A special interest attaches to the romance in which the author of "Waverley" and its imme. diate successors— at first called the "Scottish Novels " — left the national ohannel in which he had achieved such fame, and for the first time travelled into England. This episode in Scott's career— as recorded through the introduction to the present volume — is highly interesting, and the new publication will doubtless serve to create a fresh circle of readers.

" In his volume of etchings arid verse, " The Earth Fiend," Mr William Strang has told ,his story in his own native dialect. Here are two verses : Let folk wha ghaist tales disbelieve Pass this one by ; But folk as wise and folk as stieve, As stout o' heart as firm o* nieve, Ken its nae lie. ' A callant braw took Havock farm, Doon by the glen, And yowed that he, by toil o's arm, A name wad mak' baith snug and. warm, Groose but and ben.

If proof were needed of the firm hold Mr Hall Caine's latesb story, " The Scapegoat," has taken of the novel-reading public, it might be found in the rush for the cheap edition of that work, which, by the way, is something considerably more than a reprint, having been largely rewritten. No fewer than 6000 copies were taken up by the trade before publication. - An earlier novel, " The Deemster," has run through a dozen editions. Mr Hall Oaine is also one of the few authors who can sell their stories before a line of them is written, and at priced that would make an old-fashioned publisher's hair stand on end.

The Thinker, a monthly that supplies a comprehensive view of religious thought in England and throughout the world, has in a recent number a contribution from the pen of Rev. J. Magens Mello, M.A., F.G.S , on the great flood of which we have a record in Genesis. He rejects the theories that the flood covered either the whole area of the globe, or the whole of its inhabited portions, and regards the event as belonging specially to the country-dwelt in by Noah. •• It was here that the fatal alliances were made, by which the God-fearing raca of Seth was corrupted, and it was this country and its inhabitants which were overwhelmed." The first verse of the account should therefore be translated : " Every living substanoe will I destroy from the face of the Adamah "— the territory occupied by the essentially white races— not from the entiie globe. He notes in this connection that there is no original tradition of the flood among the negro, yellow, and red races, whom he regards as being of a pre-Adamite stock. Replying to various objections, he argues that this interpretation bring 3 about absolute harmony between the sacred narrative and the various deductions from the latest researches, whether in physical, ethnological, or philological science.