LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2298, 17 March 1898, Page 45

LITERARY NOTES.

v• . • Has Mr Crockett come to the tardy conclusion that the " kailyard " series is rtlayed out 1 It would seem so from his new romance "The Red Asp," wherein he hfs deserted his native heath in favour of the Baltic. • . • There are few writers of fiction who convey a greater impression of a powerful imagination, tinged with a strain of somewhat grim mystioi3m, together with a suspicion of skilful jugglery with words, than Mr Robert Hichens.— Pall Mall Gazette. • . • General Sir Evelyn Wood has just paid j a high compliment to Mr Eobert Blatchford's " Tommy Atkins." Y/iiting to Mr Richard Chamberlain, Sir Evelyn says : " I picked up ] ' Tommy Atklnß ' last evening after an early j dinner, read till 12 midnight, and have just now finished the most deligfctEul book I've read for many a day." j • . • Most students of our literature admit ; that the eighteenth century found us with j an untempered and licentious prose, j and left us with, a precise and ordered prose, j That it achieved a prose perfect at all points j no one contends. Bat at least it achieved j some of the primary qualities of good prose — order, balance, precision. These qualities ' were not present in the prose which Dryden i and Swift found — or, if present, were accidental, not constant and characteristic : they were constant and characteristic in the j prose' which Gibbon and Johnson lets. — j " Speaker." j • . • The great attention which our land j and sea forces are attracting nowadays gives ] special importance to " The Navy and Army j Illustrated Library " and " Stories of National j Heroes," which Gsorge Nesses, Limited, and j Messrs Hudson and Kearns are to publish j shortly. Each work will be completed in 12 sixpenny fortnightly parts, and each part will contain 24 pages, profusely illustrated, j It is proposed to deal severally with some notable figures in the history of England, and these men, whether sailors or soldiers, j are takeu as representative of their time. The first volume will be " Wellington and Waterloo," by Major Arthur Griffiths, which will have an introduction by Lord Wolseley. This will be followed by " Drake and the Baginning of Empire," by John Leyland, with an introduction by R9ar-admiral Lord ! Charles Bereeford, 0.8. • . • To the first cheap edition of " Saint Abe and His Seven Wives : a Tale of Salt Lake City," which appears in a white cloth cover, Mr Robert Buchanan appends an interesting bioliographjcal note, in which he reminds us that the work appeared anonymously in 1870, "at a time when all the Cockney bastions of criticism were swarming with sharpshooters on the lookout for 1 the d d Scotchman ' who had dared to denounce Logrolling." Ifc came out at the same time aa the •• Drama of Kings," to which the author put his name. . The " Drama," he tells us, " was torn to shreda in eveiy newspaper " ; the satire, because no ' one suspected who had written it, was at once hailed as a masterpiece. •.■The Bfonte Society now numbers 290 members, showing an increase of 30 in the year, and judging by the enthusiasm shown at the Halifax meeting recently, ifc is not likely sooo to share the fate of the Browning Society. Sir Wetnyss Rsid made an interesting speech, and told a story of a very distinguished mat* who, being esgaged in reading " Jane Eyre " when the dinner bell rang, took it down with him and surreptitiously read it during the meal, although he had been invited to that dinner party to meet two yrutjg ladies who had heard a great deal of bis conversational powers ! Sir Wemyss Reid also made the interesting statement that bsrely a mocih ago he met in London "a gentleman, still taking an active interest in life, who was not only the original of one of Charlotte Bronte's most famous characters, but whose name had been coupled with hers as the man she was 'likely to marry.' " • . • In the cnrrent number of the Contemporary Review Mr Haveiock Ellis, who has been experimenting upon himself with the drug " mescal," gives a minute and very carious report of his sensations while under its influence. One peculiarity of them is of special interest for the student of Ecglish poetry. A large part of ths charm of this drug lies, we are told, " in the halo of beauty which it casts around the simplest and commonest thing's. If it should ever chance," says Mr EUif, that the consumption of mescal becomes a habit, the favourite poet of the mescal drinker will certainly be Wordsworth." If this is so, the new narcotic, it seems to us, will as certainly supply what advertisers describe as a " felt want." For whatever the fanatical Wordsworthian may think, there are many images and many more lines which seem even to a genuine i admirer of that great poet to require a little j more elevation than they possess. This the j reader himself will now be able to supply. Fortified with a " nip " of mescal wa shall j approach these passages in a new and more favourable mood. A " halo of beauty " will rest upon the Spade with which Wilkinson has tilled the ground, and when the sailor's mother remarks that she has travelled far as Hull to see What clothes he might have left or other property, we shall for the first time perceive the " natural magic " of that hypothetical ward- j robe, and detect a haunting music in the j lines. • . • Mrs Bishop, whose new and interesting book, " Korea and its Neighbours," is having quite a vogue, was born in Yorkshire in 1831, and is the daughter of a clergyman. She began to travel when 22, spending many years in North America and eight years in Asia. In 1881 she married Dr John Bishop, but became a widow in 1886, and took to travel again in Asia for five years. In 1892 she was elected the first lady Fellow or the Royal Geographical Society. Her first book, " The Englishwoman in America," was published in 1856, and was succeeded seven years afterwards by " Six Months in the Sandwich Islands." Since then 6ix other works of travel have come from her per, { besides numerous contributions to reviews , and magazines. The latest of her wprks, in ; two volumes, describes her four visits to •' Korea between January, 1894, and Marcb, 18<J7, and is by an UMW&ififcJoj?

written by Sir Walter C. Hillier, late British I Consul general for Korea. JCis Bishop's ? book is doably welcome from the dearth of recent information about a region on which the eyea of Europe ara now fixed, and in spite of Sir Walter Hillier's prognostication that "much that came under her observation will, before long,, ba ' improved ' out of existence," there is ample cause for gratitude to her for this timely aid to knowledge of the present conditions of the country. SOME LITERARY FETISHES. Charles Dickens had a curious caprice. He professed that he could not write with ease and pleasure unless certain quaint little bronzes were upon his desk. When they i wera there the shuttles in the wonderful web ; of fiction flew with magical rapidity. He i needed three things — blue ink, quill pens, j and his fetishes. j A lady who has visited the Norwegian f dramatist Henrik Ibsen at his home has ia- ! formed the world that in precisely the same J manner he uses a queer collection of copper ; animals. They crowd upon his table — j grotesque cats and rabbits and other bits of : clever modelling. Ibsen finds in' their com- j panionship a help and spur, and he U t emphatic in saying that if they vanished \ ha should produce no plays. ! Jules Michelet, the French biutorian, a • tremendous toiler through a long lifetime, I had a strange love for the coarse boxes in which he kept his papers. He preserved I them with him. unchanged in his study for ! 40 years. However damaged and begrimed ( they might become, and this was inevitable, ; hs would not have them changed. Probably ; their presence seemed to assist his flow of { ideas. He was equally faithful to an old j dilapidated tablecover. Holes and ink- \ stains were not detrimental to its value in \ Michelefc's eyes. 1 In the case of Haydn, the composer, a ring ; was the fetish. If be had it upon his finger • he could think brilliantly ; it he missed it all i his skill seemed gone. He often declared ] that without this trinket he was curiously I dull. He might sit down to an instrument, j but all creative powar, he would find, had j departed from him.