LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2045, 4 May 1893, Page 50

LITERARY NOTES.

Mr F. O. Selous, the lion-hunter, who has been 22 years in Maahonaland, hunting, exploring, and road-making, is at present down in Suffolk, engaged on the book which he will send to press before he returns to Africa. He expects to be back ia London during May. The most extraordinary effort ever made in the way of translation, Dr A. K. H Boyd suggests in Longman's Magazine, was that of a miraculous Hebiew scholar, who translated into Hebrew the well-known Scotch song, " Hame cam' our gade man at e'en> And bame cam' he," retaining the exact rhythm and giving rhymes. A book by Mr Evelyn Burnaby, entitled "" From Land's Ead to John o' Groat's," wili be published immediately. It is a gossipy account of a trip made on horseback between the points indicated in the title. The author is a brother of the late Captain Burnaby, and many hitherto unpublished anecdotes o£ that plucky traveller and soldier are introduced.

A tourist has scribbled in his notebook some of the things which he found in a visitors' album in Devonshire, at a country inn where he was detained over a stormy ■day. His best ijxlract is the comment upon a mis-spellci word. " I can fully recomend this inn," ono traveller wrote, with more kindliness thaa orthography. Under this a later, comec had written :

Charles King; He Is, too, a poet of high order, his ' Francesca of Eimini ' attracting the attention of critics some years ago. He is, also, a biographical writer, as his published 'Life and Letters of Joseph Hardy Nersima' attests. Again, Professor Hardy is a Burveyor of no mean order, and has Written a successful work on that subject, entitled 'New Methods of Topographical Surveying,' which in many qaarters is accepted as a standard work. For such a man to add the work of editorially directing a popular magazine to his other accomplishments adds interest to the experiment. The career of Mr Howell's successor will at all events be watched by many in New York and outside of it as w*ll."

iKow cftft you " fully recommend it \Jnle«S another " m" you lend it? SShxjfn of this letter, you must see, "JChe word a thousandfold must be 'Short of its full identity.

Again this year, as last, a Pall Mall Gazatte correspondent has tabulated all foreign words and expressions used by leader writers of the Times during the preceding 12 months. The results of this ana'ysis are ourious. The total now is only 229 against 819 a year ago. « Modus vivendi " heads the list with 19 appearances, "prinia facie" stands second with 15, and "maximum" and "minimum" record 14 each. Many of the phrases included might almost be as thoroughly English by adoption, but the critic is severe. la some cases the wander is that occasion should have arisen for the use of a certain phrase at «y, and its recurrence is indeed remarkable— for example, " ateliers nationaux" and " majestats-beleidigung " three times each.

the Woman's Herald, which began a new * series with its February issue, announced its future policy in very outspoken language. Henceforth, we learn, it brackets Temperance on its flag with Suffrage. "It is only," we are assured, " by the bullet of the woman's ballot that Boniface will be brought low." Miss Frances E. Willard contributes a very readable article to this number on " The New Ideal of Womanhood." She playfully alludes to tho fact that George Eliot was the first woman to attain the post mortem honour of having her husband called " her widower," and remarks that ' a turn about is fair play." The ideal woman will not write upon her visiting card, nor insist on having her letters addressed to, "Mrs John Smith'; but if her maiden name was Jones, she will fling her banner to the breeze . as " Mary Jones-Smifcb," and will be sure to make it honourable.

It may not be out of place to mention here (says a Home paper) the singular rush that has within the last four or five months been made on Mr Eric Mackay's " Love Letters." Mr Walter Scott is bringing out a fifth and very large edition in the " Canterbury Poets " series ; but this, it seems, does cot satisfy the demand, for a library edition is now called for, and will be issued early in May by the newly-established firm of Messrs Lamley and Co. Several new poems will be included in the forthcoming volume, among them the " Choral Ode to Liberty " (which saw the light for the first time in America), and some hitherto unpublished stanzas " On the First Anniversary of the Death of the Duke of Clarence," which were addressed to the Prince of Wales, and were accepted, in the original MS , by his Royal Highness on January 14 of this year. The publishers intend to bring out the book very handsomely, using new type and thick paper ; the cover will bear tbe words "Author's Edition," to distinguish it from the "Canterbury," Tauchnitz, and American issues.

In a recent number of St. Nicholas MrWentworth Hlgginsdfi, comparing Boston with Edinburgh as a literary centre, evidently draws on the past rather than on the present,' hutury of both cities. It is true that " Scotland still holds its own " in literature, but the locale of the grip, as everybody knows, is more in London than in Edinburgh. Mr Higginson tells us that there was a time when one might easily meet in a single Boston book store in a day such men as Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Parker, Whittier, Aldricb, and Ho wells. So also, once upon a time, one might have encountered in the streets of the Scottish capital such lights of literature as Scott and Hogg and De Quincey and Christopher North, to mention only a few names. But the glory of literary FCdinburgli has long since departed, and the northern men of letters of to-day seem for the most part to have pinned their faith on tho dictum of Dr Johnson, that much can be made of a Scotsman if London catch him young. A C'unfciy g ! rl to whom Dr Hjlmes w*B pointu 1 0.;.. in B*t>r remarked that she Bjust '♦ write home about this, for up in P^acbsm we think a grenk deal of aiuhora " Edinburgh still thinks " a great dof 1 of authois," but it ?he wants to look upon " whole shelves of her libraries walking about in coats aud gowns" — to ueie Willis's phrase — she must " get away down south. " before satisfying her curiosity. Mr Howell soon got tired of edMng the Cosmopolitan Magazine, and Professor Arthur S. Hardy was offered and accepted the position, and- was fco take up the duties about the time the last San Francisco mail left America. Regarding this appointment a writer says : — l> Professor Hardy has, to the best of my knowledge, never occupied an editorial chair. He ia a Dartmouth professor, and a man of singularly good literary judgment. To the public he is, however, best known as the author of that successful novel, 'Bat Yet a Woman,' and later, of 'The Wind of Destiny' and 'Passe Rose' The new editor is, in many respects, a versatile man. Ho is a graduate of West Poiol-, where he rubbed uniforms against Captain