LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2299, 24 March 1898, Page 54

LITERARY NOTES.

1 . * Neither about people nor poetry did I Kossetti; as we learn from his correspon- • dence, have any vague reverences. Words- ] worth is " good, you know, bat unbearable." Of Oarlyle, who had made a fool of himself by giving stupid advice to a Prsraphaelite poet he had not read, he writes: " Now that we are allied with Turkey we might think j seriously of the bastinado for that old man s on auob occasions." — Bookman. • . * Messrs Cassell and Company, Limited, publishers, of London, Melbourne, and Sydney, inform us that they are about to issue a sixpenny edition of " King Solomon's Minea," by Eider Haggard. When first published some years since, this exciting, realistic novel took the world by storm The London Saturday Review wrote concerning it : "To tell the truth, we would give many novels — say 800 (that is about the yearly harvest) — for suoh a book as • KiDg Solomon's Mines.' " We have no doubt that there will be an immense demand for this sixpenny issue. The work is also to be done in cloth at one shilling. • . • A translation of "II Trionfo della Morte " (The Triumph of Death), by Gabriele D'AnnuKzio, will be published by Mr William Heinemann next week. The | author has recently been elected a member I of the House of Representatives in Rome, ■ and has besides written a romantic play for I Sarah Bsrnnardt, in which the great | tragedienne will appear shortly. It will be I interesting to see whether the English public I endorses the enthusiastic verdict of Italy, i France, and Gsrmany on the v/ork of one who is there looked upon as quite the most remarkable of the younger forces in European literature. • . • The late Mrs Cowden Clarke was so little an egoist that she compressed 82 years ! of her life's history into a small volume of I 2GO pages. Nor would she have done even this if her publisher and friend bad not per-- ; snaded her that a memory impressed with J the living personalities of such men as Keats and Lamb, Mendelssohn and Gounod, though unsupported by diaries and letter?, could not fail to ensure a number of interested readers for her biography. Mrs Cowden Clarke retained a considerable measure of vigour and zest in life up to the last. Mr Fisher Unwin met her holiday-making afc Lucerae : as recently as the autumn of. 1897.

i * . • Within the last few years the atteni tion of the cricical has been arrested by ! several new writers of Celtic origin, who hays j found their chief material in Celtic poerry and legend. These they have handled with a force aDd beauty which has been generally recognised by all capable critics, and nothing was really wanting to their jast and ample appreciation, except that the fanatical racetheorist should leave them — and ve — alone. Bat this, of course, is exactly what the fanai tical racs-tbeorist • declines to do. He has i seized upon their productions as so many | triumphantly significant sprouts from hia | absurd genealogical tree ; and it is now bej comiag difficult to do justice to the high ! imaginative power and true poetic gift of •writers like Miss Fiona Macleod or Ms W. B. Yeats without indirectly encouraging the upholders of the docirine that all, or nearly al), that is beat in English literature has been due to an unsuspected infusion of Celtic blood.— Literature. • . . A new and cheaper edition of "Thaekerayana" ia to be issued in a few days by Messrs Chatto and Windus. This work — the chief interest of which consists in its reproduction of a large number of amusing sketches by Thackeray which were found ! scattered through many of his school and I other books — g.we rise on its original appearance to a lawsuit, in which Mr George Smith", . of Messrs Smith, Elder, and Co j successfully maintained that the inclusion of long extracts from " Pendennis " and some of the other novels constituted an infringement of his copyright in those writinga. The reports of the case in the law journals (which, by she way, do not treat Thackeray in the casual, not to say disrespectful, way that Tom j Moore was treated in the report of another j copyright action, which began : a One. Moore, had written a book which he called • Irish Melodies ' ") are interesting ; they are, in fact, in a way, Thaekerayana themselves. i • . •Mr Gladstone's recent extravagant | eulogy of Arthur Hal!aas, who died m his twanty- third year, and, as everyone knows, was the friend of TeunyEOß, and the occasion | of "In Memoriam," has, Eayß the Literary : World, suggested to a. writer in Literature one of those dialogues " From the Elysian Fields" which nssd to be common in Punch. The speakers are the shades of Edward Kiog, the "Lyciilas" of Milton, and Artlmr Hsllam. The former, who died in his twenty-sixth year, is jealous of the higher posthumous rank now assigned to A. H , and approaches him with mock hnrnility. Tht;y spar amusingly over two pages, and n.e shada of E. K. concludes by saying* "W r3r 3 may j?ivs each other joy. Ws are indeed ■ happy in oar early deaths. Tlia name? u£ our eulogists and the fams of thair eulogies are imperishable ; atid in them we are \mora i assured of immortality than if we bad lived." It is a pretfty piece of satir.8 r which Mr Gladstone himself will doubtless enjoy. • . • Nobody of any note wrote oi drew expressly for juveniles between 1847 and 1857. The impression apparently pievailed at tha,, tims that literary style and artistic design would be thrown away on the youngsters, whose favourite romancist, Captain M^rryat, only produced one genuine children's book — "Masterman B<?ady" — wbila tha novels of j Mayne Raid and James Grant, although i rendered attractive to schoolboys by the ] stirring adventures and hairbreadth 'scapes with which their pages teemed, always contained a strong adult love interest which made no special appeal to youthful sympathies. Of the " fairy tales of science " the boys and girls who are now very old men and women never "heard tell," as the saying i goes, when they were little and their parents ] took' them to see orreries. The 1 only fairies they knew anything about figured in tawdry picture books and on the pantomimic stage. Nowadays there are no young folks, of any other nationality so lavishly provided with fictional literature, admirably illustrated, apd satisfying every requirement of the juvenile intellect and taste, as are the fortunate children of these i«le3.— Daily Telegraph. • . • An old Oxon.ia* gives the following reminiscences of tha late Rev. C. L. Dodgson ("Lewis Carroll"):—"! met him a$ dinner at Christ Church once, on which occasion the only Alioe-in-Wonderlandy thing I remember hearing him say was hia ; wonctaring why a cat had only one tail. Ha | was credited "with having disposed o£ the Homeric problem by tbe solution that the Iliad and the Odyssey were not really written by Homer, but by another man of the same name. Ha was a mathematical Don, and a I good many years ago, when the unco' j orthodox in Oxford thought that Jowett ought to be got out of the place, brought out an elaborate problem in which the thing to be done was « u> eliminate J. He 1 once printed a fanciful description of a museum which was about to be constructed in Oxford. Basides other accommodation, it was to contain a large room for the greatest common measure, a small room for the least comraon multiple, a long passage in which, in the beautiful language of Euclid, lines could be produced ever so far, and an apartment for fractions reduced to their lowest terms — and undergraduates were to be allowed to keep their terms there, too." .■ . The Academy has awarded lOOgs to Mr Stephen Phillips for his " Poems," and 50gs to Mr W. E. Henley for bis " Essay on the lafe, Gsnius, and Achievement of Burns," these being in its judgment the most worthy books published in 1897. " The School for Saints," by John Oliver Hobbes, was excluded from competition for an obvious reason by the author's special request. Our contemporary sought the assistance of msa of letters in making the award, bnt found the opinions given were of so little use that the task of selection, fell wholly on itself. And it modestly avers its belief that " from the most patient consideration of the whole matter" ifc has " done well." We have no desire to cavil at our contemporary's enterprise. On the contrary, for the sake of poor authors, we wish more plums of this sort could be placed ia their way. Bub nothing can disguise the fact that it was an advertising dodge on the part of the new proprietor of the paper. The announcement of the award is headed "The ' Crowned ' Booka." — Literary World.

20,000 Bedding Plants, including Asterßj Phlox, Cosmos, Stocks, Lobelia, Coreopsis, Marigolds, Diamhus, Gaillardia — Is dozen. Orders for 5s nost free to country,— NiMMO AN» Blair/ Duacdin.