LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2087, 22 February 1894, Page 45

LITERARY NOTES.

" French and German Echoes," sold at a penny, and illustrated, is a modest attempt to supply students with interesting reading in French and German, the text being supplied with explanatory footnotes. It is a most useful little periodical, and is edited by Mr J. J. Benzamaker, the publishers being Messrs A. and C. Black.

Messrs William Blackwood and Sons will issue very shortly in volume form Sir Herbert Maxwell's recently delivered Rhind Lectures in ArcbEeology, under the title of " Scottish Land Names : their Language and Lessons, with Rules to direct the Study of them."

In writing a novel, Mr James Payn says that he first invents his plot, and then searches for the people who can best exemplify it. All of bis characters are suggested by real people — so much so that he first makes the skeleton of his novel with the real people's names. He writes his outline on large sheets of paper, and puts down, under each one's name, the particular things that person is to do in the book. He says that after this is done the writing of the novel is mere play.

The Cornell University has indeed had a stroke of luck. Among its scholars is a son of a certain gentleman of wealth, a Mr Abrahams, who, in return for his son's education, has just presented the library with a perfectly unique collection of works on Spinoza and Kant. The famous collection in the British Museum has only about a third of these volumes, which number 150 about Spinoza and 984 about Kant.

Under the title of " Oorea and the Sacred White Mount," Messrs George Philip and Son have in the press for publication this

year an account of "a journey in Oorea in 1891 by Captain Cavendish, Ist Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, and of the accent of Paik-tuSan, " The White .Mountain," by his companion, Captain H. E. Goold-Adams, R.A. The book will be accompanied by two maps and 40 illustrations. Twenty of the latter will illustrate native manners and customs, and have been specially drawn for the author by a Corean artist. It is rather singular that there is no authoritative Life of Coleridge. The fact will give additional interest and value to the memoir of the poet which Mr J. Dykes Campbell is now seeing through the press, and which- Messrs Macmillan will publish. It is based upon the biographical sketch prefixed to the one-volume edition of „the poetical works which Mr Dykes edited, and which was issued last spring. The sketch has been carefully revised and considerably expanded, and the title of the new volume will be " Samuel Taylor Coleridge : a Narrative of the Events of His Life." Interesting revelations of the American business of modern novel-making have been made public in the law courts of the States. A woman novelist, who was sued for a debt, wrote one book of which 100,000 copies were sold. She testified that she received £200 for it. Another book reached 50,000 copies, and she got £50 for it. She is now employed by a book and story manufactory, receiving £8 a week. She ia given the shell or skeleton of a story, just as artificers in the trades are given patterns, and she is expected to fill up the chinks at the rate of one «itory every two weeks, and her employers do not care whether she buys, begs, borrows, or steals her dialogue and situations. For a new edition of the " Three Musketeers," M. Alexandre Dumas has written, in the form of a preface, a letter to his father, wherein he tells the story of one evening finding the great Alexandre visibly depressed and with red eyes. "What is the matter ? " asked the son. " I have just killed Porthos," said his father. In his comments upon this preface, M. Jacques dv Tillet eajs happily of Dumas: — "His life was nearly akin to that of his heroes ; he was a D'Artagnan of letters, sometimes an Aramis, and I believe that the real griefs of his life were a little like that which overcame him at the death of Porthos," Oxford Innia paper is a wonderful thing A strip of it 3in broad has supported a quarter of a hundredweight without yielding, and by its use the smallest Bible ever produced has been made. This, distinguished uh the "Brilliant Text" Bible, consists of 1216 papps, including maps, and measores 3£in.x 2^in x gin. It weighs 2|oz when bound in limp morocco. With a hand glass

it can be read as easily as any other edition. The "Brilliant Bible is only a very little larger. Both are likely to be in demand as curiosities, although circumstances can readily be conceived under which the smallnefrs of bulk would have advantages overbalancing the inconvenience of the minute print.

Surely the writer of the article " Free Thought of Fiction " in the current number of Woman, who roundly denounces freethinking novels, cannot have read Miss Savile- Clarke's story in the Christmas number. Is the theological novel half as objsctionable as a thinly -veiled story of seduction 1 One, too, in which the heroine is an unusually easy viotim 1 The case against the free-thinking novel is that ifc unsettles the religious convictions of the half-educated. Well, if it induces them to examine their " convictions " (?) and test their sufficiency no great harm will bo done. A traditional creed loosely held and never examined is not of much practical use, however orthodox it may appear. — Literary World.

Dr Larsdell, who has returned from the countries traversed by Marco Polo, has been following the example his predecessor set six centuries ago, by giving a literary party to inaugurate the coming appearance of his new work, entitled " Chinese Central Asia : A Ride to Little Tibet;." The party was shown a case of birds shot by Dr Lansdell in Central Asia, a silver ikon from Russia, table covers of Tashkend and Burmese embroidery, woollen and gilk carpets from Chinese Turkistan, ewers from Khokand and Khiva, metal lamps from Kasbgar, Nepal, and Coimbra, whilst on the walls hung three Roumanian ikons from Bucharest and an Armenian sacred picture from Mount Athos. There were also prison cariosities and "atrocities," among them a Finnish suit of irons weighing upwards of 1001b, a Troichatka, or Siberian scourge, a Kasbgar policeman's whip and Yarkand beating rods. The author read a description of his ride to Little Tibet, being a portion of his last journey of 50,000 miles.

Messrs Swan Sonnenscheln and Co. have jußt sent to press an important work by Miss Edith Simcox, who is beßt known to the reading public by her •• Natural Law." Its title will be " Primitive Civilisations," and its chief concern ia to sketch the history of ownership and agrarian and economic conditions among ancient Egyptians and Babylonians, ancient and modern Chinese, and some scattered stocks of apparently kindred origin. The book is not designed to support any particular historic or economic theory, though the evidence it brings together does, as a matter of fact, tend to favour the views of a group of scholars who, on quite other grounds, assume a prehistoric connection between the men of China and Babylonia, and of Babylonia and Egypt. It at the same time tendß to show that the stability of these primitive States was not unconnected with the character of their economic systems, which contained some fundamentally humane and democratic elements. This comparative atudy of their characteristic institutions throws curious light on questions of ethnographic relationship, and deals with such questions as marriage, the family, early law and custom.

Alphonse Daudet has been telling an interviewer how he writes his novels. " I first of all," be says, " put down my notes in a little pocket book which I oarry about with me. Then I write out these notes, crossing them off the pocket book with a red pencil as Igo along. These notes, just after they are written, are copied cleanly by my wife, who corrects any little errors of redundancy which I may have committed. I then take my wife's copy and go through it carefully, adding and cutting to suit my taste. The result of this manipulation is a conformation of hieroglyphics whioh shocks the eye. There is only one man in the world who could interpret them, and that is my private secretary — worth his weight in gold, let me say. To this long- suffering gentleman, therefore, my illegible manuscript passes, and from his bands it emerges nearly what it ought to be, but not quite. After a few quieter struggles, however, it is ready for the printer. My wife is a positive boon to me. I don't really know what I should do without her. A really curious thing is that Madame Daudet despises novels. I write them, you know, and Bhe despises them. She says that my novels bore her. I think she really prefers my note book."