LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2046, 11 May 1893, Page 45

LITERARY NOTES.

An unpublished letter from Dr Livingstone will appear in " The Young Man " for February. It was addressed to his intimate friend, Dr James Hamilton, and was brought to England by Stanley.

Messrs Hutchison and Co. will in a few days publish a work by the Rev. Dr J. W. Lee, entitled " The Making of a Man." It is a study of man in relation to the universe, in which the lines of science and religion are woven into harmony.

The book of travel by "A Physician," shortly to be published by Mr T. Fisher Unwin, under the title of " Seventy Years of Life iv the Victorian Bra," will contain passages of considerable interest relating to the Crimean War, where the author served on the surgical staff. His experiences generally range over four continents.

A number of the late Dante Gabriel Eosetti's finest poems were once in great danger of never seeing the .light. At the request of his wife he had compiled a MS. book of all bis poems (many of them unpublished), and when in 1862 Mrs Eosetti's tragic death occurred, he laid this treasure in her coffin. For seven years the volume remained buried in the grave at Highgate Cemetery, and it was only by powerful influence that his consent to its recovery was then gained. General 0. 0. Howard, a well-known American writer, who is shortly to visit Europe, will devote a p*art of his time to collecting materials for a life of Queen Isabella. " I think there is no monument to her in alj the New World," says General Howard, " and I can find no separate or complete biography of her. English biographers have always cast aspersions upon her Christian character, and I do not believe that the English-speak-ing people appreciate the grandeur of soul of this remarkable woman. I have proposed to get into shape a small volume touching upon Isabella's relations to Columbus, I am to travel through Spain with a view to freshen my knowledge of towns her name has honoured, and to get at some documents not otherwise attainable."

The death of John Bull, the church newspaper, was lately announced. It had an eventful career in its early days, with Th eodore Hook as editor and John Cooper Bunney (the bosom friend of Sykes, Longman's factotum) as publisher. During the trial of Queen Caroline the paper, then published at a shilling, had an immense sale. A former attendant in the Bishops' room in the House of Lords once told the writer that he lived as butler both to the Duke of Wellington and the Bishop of Rochester (Murray), and he did not know which was more aDgry if the John Bull was not well aired and properly cut on coming down to breakfast on Sunday morning. William Langland's poem, " The Vision of William concerning Piers the Ploughman, together with Vita de Do-wel, Do-bet, et Dobest secundum Wit eb Itosoun," was the work of hie life. 'He was engaged on it from 1362 to 1392, revising, rewriting, omitting, and adding. He produced it in three notably distinct forms, all showing with what keen and unwearied interest he watched the courts of events. Milton's " Paradise Lost " was commenced between 1639 and 1642, and completed about the time of the " Great Fire of London " in September 1666. Its author composed it in passages of from 10 to 20 lines at a time, and then dictated them to an amanuensis, usually some attached friend. It was first published in 1667, by one Samuel Simmons,

and a second edition appeared in 1674. For these two editions Milton received £10, and his widow £8 more. Gray's "Elegy" is said to have occupied his time for seven years.

Dictionary-making does not seem to be quite so successful with the Frenoh as with us. Dr Johnson, when asked how he expected to get through his dictionary single-handed in three years when the Frenoh Academy of 40 members took 40 years to a like taßk, replied that 40 times 40 made 1600, and that as three was to 1600 so was an Englishman to a Frenchman. If the Doctor were alive now he would be chuckling over the practical proofs of his opinion. After being on it for over 40 years the modern Frenoh Academy has announced the abandonment of the huge "Dictionalre Histoiique" that was to be. We are accustomed to say— without believing it in any case— that thej do these things better in France ; but with our own Dr Murray at the letter O, and steadily holding on, the remark will henceforth have to be made with an exception. After all, perhaps the French are as well without their great dictionary. The Irishman, set to a study of Jobnson, had to complain of the frequent change of subject, and Browning's intricacy has been accounted for since Mrs Sutherland Orr told us that in early life he digested the lexicon right through from A to Zi

One of Mr Kipling's early books, and by no means the least characteristic in point of style, was withdrawn from circulation because the title he had taken, " The City of Dreadful Night," had been anticipated by the late Mr James Thomson ("BY."), and we must assume that neither Mr Kipling nor his publishers remembered the fact. In the preface to a new volume of Mr Thomson's "Poems, Essays, and Fragments," edited by Mr Johu M. Robertson (the present editor of the National Reformer), this friend of Thomson's intimates bis opinion that the "success of esteem" hitherto accorded to his works is unlikely «ver to grow into a success of popularity. The reason of this, according to Mr Robertson, is that neither Thomson's pessimism nor his criticism ministers enough to the normal judgment to win him a large audience. The book constitutes the fifth volume of Thomson's works, and con&iets almost entirely of verse and pro°e contributed to the" National Reformer before 1875, or communicated by his literary executor to its columns during the past year or two. The editor thinks it may serve to test the public's inclination to have more of his scattered writing?. These now printed represent his earlier and comparatively speaking happier years, and

a photograph of the 'writer as he was In youth is fittingly prefixed to them.