LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2086, 15 February 1894, Page 41

LITERARY NOTES.

Sir Robert Ball, professor of astronomy at Cambridge, is to contribute a aeries of short biographical studies on " The Great Astronomers " to Good Words during the coming year, accompanied with portraits and numerous illustrations. Mr Baring-Gould's new three-volume story, entitled " Kitty Alone," will appear serially in the same magazine. The late Phillips Bcooks's "Letters of Travel," just published by Messrs Macmillan and Co., is a very interesting book. When he went on any far journey, Phillips Brooks was in the habit of writing letters to his family detailing what he saw. The " Letters of Travel " have reference to two journeys, one'in 1865-66, the other in 1882-83. Mr Fisher Unwin will publish in the beginning of the year Mr W. M. Conway's narrative of his travels and mountaineering adventures in Cashmere and the Earakoram range, which the author is now seeing through the press. The work will be in two volumes, and will be richly illustrated with reproductions of the drawings made on the spot by Mr M'Cormac, the artist of the expedition. In the Ladies' Home Journal for December Mrs Frances Hodgson Burnett begins an account of " How Fauntleroy Really Occurred." She gets as far in the pretty story of her little boy as the time when he has learnt to speak fairly well, and to make off with tbe breakfast loaf in order to give it to a ragged negro girl on the front step, with the laconic explanation, " Lady, bead." How often Thackeray's critics complain of the excellent but somewhat stolid Dobbin, and contrast him with the more impressive characters of " Vanity Fair." The other day, however, we saw an obituary notice of a William Dobbin, born in Fermanagh in 1834, whose character seems to hare been precisely the same as the fictitious Dobbin. As he was one of a family of nine, is it not possible that Thackeray may have used him, or one of his brothers, as a model ? "John Oliver Hobbes" (Mrs Craigie) has been rather seriously indisposed, and has been under treatment at one of the London hospitals. She is now, however, somewhat better. Her new book, " A Bundle of Life," is a society story, and contains in the shape of a dedication and a prologue the first verse that Mrs Craigie has ever published. "A Bundle of Life " is Mrs Craigie's fourth book, and, like the three which preceded it, appears in the Pseudonym Library. . Few characters in fiction have been more directly copied from life than the " Oheeryble Brothers " from the brothers Grant, of Ramsbottom, — not even the Boythorne of Bleak House, whom everyone recognised as Landor. There are many recollections of the Grants still extant in south-east Lancashire, and a large number of these are to be collected by the Rev, W. H. Elliot, in "The Country and Church of the Cheeryble Brothers," which is shortly to be published by Messrs George Lewis and Son, of Selkirk. Are black and white illustrations to be superseded by coloured ones in a certain class of books for adults ? We knew that in those for quite young children colours held the field. It would appear that Mr J. 0. Nlmmo believes in the popularity- of coloured pictures even in bo serious a work as " Brighton and its Coaches : a History of the London and Brighton Road." We must confess we Bhare his feeling in this instance, but are fairly puzzled to know how the work can be produced — " coloured by hand " as the title page explains — for the price. Few books have been more ruthlessly criticised than Mies Marie Corelli's " Barabbas." We (Literary World) hear, however, that Canon Wilberforce, notwithstanding his illness, has written to the author in these words : " My verdict upon it is that it is a high-minded and very powerful effort to revivify by the legitimate use of the imagination a time-honoured history, by depolarising it from the conventionality in which it had become crystallised. The romance can by no possibility harm any one, and it may cause many to reread and reconsider the inspired records. God bless and teach and use you. — Basil Wilberforce." "Witnesses to the Unseen, and Other Essays," is the name of a volume of papers by Mr Wilfred Ward, which Messrs Macmillan are about to publish. Mr Ward is well known as the author of two works, "William George Ward and the Oxford Movement " and " William George Ward and the Catholic Revival." A special interest attaches to the first essay, " Witnesses to the Unseen," from the fact that it was suggested by a conversation with the late Lord Tennyson. Afterwards Tennyson saw the essay, and so far as it dealt with the spirit of his own work approved it. It is a strange thing that the national airs of great countries are short, while those of little countries are very long. For instance, " God Save the Queen " is 14 bars, the Russian hymn 16 bars, and "Hail, Columbia," the foremost among the American airs, has 28 bars. On the other hand, Siam's national hymn has 76 bars, that of Uruguay 70, Chili's 46, and so on. San Marino, the smallest republic in the world, has the longest national hymn. The national hymn of China is so long that when people want to hear it they have to take half a day off to be able to listen to its strains. <

Among ministerial novelists Mr Silas K. Hocking — he wisely discards the " Rev." — probably stands first in circulation and therefore in popularity. Eighty thousand volumes a year is reported to be his sales. It may interest tbe seekers out of special providences to know that Mr Hocking attributes his launching out into authorship to a shower of rain. He explained it to one of the editors of The Young Man thus:— " When I was a minister at Burnley, I was going out one day for a walk, when the rain suddenly descended in such a dismal fashion that I returned to my study. I found some old circuit plans on the table, and, just to pass the time, I cut them into strips, and on the blank sides began to scribble some curious Btories I had beard from an old seafaring uncle of mine. The thing grew upon me. I became interested, and when I had finished 20 chapters I mentioned the fact casually to a local editor. He asked me for the M3S., and thus, 16 years ago, my first story, 'Alec Green,' appeared in print." Time was, not so long ago either, when fiction was taboo in a minister's household. We have advanced since those days. Who knows but the Gaiety libretto may in a few years ba written ' by a dramatist in holy orders 1 It is the theatre's turn next.