LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2104, 21 June 1894, Page 40

LITERARY NOTES.

'" The wonderful Chinese encylopaadia comprises 5020jVolumes. A perfect set, the oniy one in Europe, is about to be placed in the library of the British Museum. The work is very rare, and even in China there are not more than five copies of this edition.

It is interesting to Bee how the age of the heioine of the modern novel differs from that of older writers. Oat of 30 of Scott's heroines, 16 are described as under 20, three are over 20, and only one, Amy Robsart, is a heroine of " uncertain age," since she is historically a middle-aged matron and fictitiously a youthful bride. But the conspicuous character of the modern novel is a woman, not a girl, who has lived and expsilenced much, and not infrequently is married, before the story introduces her as its central figure.

Mr Robert Clark, the senior partner of the well-known Edinburgh printers, recently told an interviewer that after the death of Tennyson, so extraordinary was the demand for his works, that 26 punting machines were engaged for three weeks in providing the necessary Bupply. The popularity of the " Waverley Novels " is attested by the remarkable fact that for the last 30 years no fewer than 30 hands have been uniaterraptedly engaged by this one firm in producing Sir Walter Scott's works. Sir Arthur Sullivan, speaking of thoroughness in art, said a few days ago : " I remember once, in my earlier days, I was doing some little stage music for an opera at Covent Garden. • It was only a little thing, and yet I felt I had to put my whole being into it. I took as much pains with the orchestration as i£ it had been some great work, a symphony or an oratorio, and the consciousness of this bothered me, and I one day said as much to Beverley, the great scenepainter. His reply has stuck to me ever since. ' That is how it should be. If I had to paint a brick wall I should take as much trouble over it as if it were a miniature of the Queet I .' " As soon as Mr Coulson Kernahan has

his volume of essays, "Sorrow and Song,' out of hand, he proposes setting to work on a volume which is to bear the singular title of " Dead Faces." It -is to be a somewhat uncanny book, and likely to be quite out o£ the common. A few of the studies will be entirely supposititious, .but in some the reader will be brought in imagination to stand by the death-bed of real persons (Heine, the German poet, and Pranzini, the French murderer— though his death-bed was the scaffold — for instance); and from that standpoint a light will be cast as it were over their past lives, and some attempt made to life the curtain of the future. The idea is a daring one, and we shall be curious to tea how the author of " A Dead Man's Diary " and " A Book of Strange Sins " works it out.

The author of the latest commentary on Ibsen, Mr Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen, though he has always written in English, is a Norwegian, born at Fredericsvaern in 1848. Mr Boyesen went to Chicago in 1868 to spy out the nakedness of the land, liked it, and started a Norse newspaper for the Swedes in the North-west?. From tbis he drifted to the German Professorship in the Cornell University, which he afterwards exchanged for the Chair of Literature in Columbia College, the great New York university. He has made two literary hits— the very successful play, " Alpine Roses," put on the boards iv 1884, and his novel, " Gunnar," published in 1874. In person Mr Boyesen is a short, sturdily-built man with bright blue eyes and the florid Norse colouring, but auburn hair in the place of the flaxen which we associate with his countrymen. Mr Boyesen is, in his own line of English, German, and Scandinavian literature, one of the most learned men in America.

It is a mistake to suppose that all remarkable men write a characteristic hand. Mr Chamberlain, for instance, writes an elegant, upright, somewhat sprawling fist, while Mr Thomas Hardy's writing is almost painfully commonplace. Messrs Grant Allen and Hall Came write legible hands, while Mr Oscar Wilde's pretty words straggle over the paga in a disjointed fashion, many of the letters being " printed." Mr Edmund Yates and Professor Stuart Blackie are dreaded by compositor?, a page of their manuscript looking a good deal like a Chinese puzzle. Dr W. G. Grace writes a good, open, legible hand. The same may be said of Lord Charles Beresf ord. Sir Frederick Leighton's signature is remarkable for the heavy top stroke of the " F," his ordinary hand being in no way distinguished except for its illegibility. The Rev. H. R. Haweis writes a vile "fist," and any odd scrap of paper serves for one of his notes. " Edna Lyall " (Ada Ellen Bayly) writes an extremely pretty hand; while that of Mrs Kendal (Madge E. Grimston) is large and spreading. Mr Grant A'leu has just published a volume of poems. A correspondent tells us (says a Home paper) that he knew that Mr Grant Allen was guilty of this "lastitfirmity of noble minds " as far back as 1889, when he was visiting the new poet's father in his delightful horne — the old Government House at Kingston, Ontario. Mr Grant Allen is, as everyone knows, a Canadian. His father's house stands ri^ht on Lake Ontario, and is as beautiful an Old World house as there is on the continent of America. He gets his name of Grant from his mother, the daughter of one of the Grants, barons of Longueuil. The present Baron de Longueuil belongs to the landed aristocracy of England. The Barony of Ldngueuil enjoys the distinction of being the one old Canadian seignory recognieed as an English title, as set forth in the London (Royal) Gazette o£ Dacomber 4, 1880, and Canada Gazette of January 21, 1881. By his mother, Mr Grant Allen is a descendant, or collateral descendant, of the great La Salle, the pioneer of Illinois and Louisiana, and the finest Frenchman who ever set foot in the New World. A portrait of La Salle hangs in the Allen mansion at Kingston.

Valuable Discovery fou thk Haib.— lf yotu hair is turning grey or white, or falling off übo the "Mexican Haib Rknbweb," for it vnUposi* tivdu restore in every case Grey or White Bair to its original colour witaout leaving the disagreeable imell ;of moat " restorere." It makeß the holr charmingly beautiful, aa well as promoting the growth of the h»ir on bald spots, where the glanda we not deoayed. Aak your ohemiat for ™Thb MuriCAH Hair Rbhbwkr." Sold fey ohemlati and porfumeni everywhere at 3a 6d per bottle Wholesale depot, S3 Farringdon road. London ~

—The minister who had difficulty in keeping his parishioners' eyes fixed on him during the sermon solved the difficulty by placing a large clock directly behind him.

— Visitor: "And what is little Johnny going to be when he grows to be a man 1 " Little Johnny : " I ain't quite settled whether I'll be a pirate or an Injun-killer." —In reply to a ticklish question, an editor exhibited his skill in the sign language by making tbis reply :—": — " I would be au *my reputaii >n by an anawer."