LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2303, 21 April 1898, Page 42

LITERARY NOTES.

• . • Biographies of Napoleon are to ba had as plentifully as primroses in the springtime. Nelson has bad more attention recently paid to him. dead, than he ever received living. — A.. G- Bj'kes.

* . • There ars abuadsmt raasons for thiiakiog that Mr Lawrence Irvirg will hereafter wiite a fine play, although for the present be -bas not succeeded in catching the popular taste. He is a real student, bas undeniable ability, and possesses no little psychological force and acumen. — Daily Telegraph.

• . • Susan Ferrier is almost forgotten nowadays, but at one time sbe was a very popular and able novelist, and it is said that Sir Walter Scott even laboured under the suspicion of having written some work that really belonged to her. Mr John Murray has in preparation a " Memoir " of her which is based on her private correspondence in the possession of, and collected by, bar nephew, John Ferrier, and edited by Mr John A. Doyle.

• . • Mr Heinemann's enterprise and zeal for literature are proverbial. By means of admirable translations he has already laid open to the British public the works of many great continental writers who, but for his assistance, would have remained sealed books to the bulk of our countrymen. For whether it be from insular self-sufficiency or sheer incapacity, the Englishman's knowledge of continental languages seldom extends beyond a mere smattering of French, —Pall Mall Gazette.

• . • An amusing complication has just arisen over the rather striking title of " The Veiled Man." Becently Messrs Pearson (Limited) announced "The Veiled Mat?," by Mr Owen Rhoscomyl, and not until the book had gone to press did they discover tbafc Mr William Le Queux had already obtained a right in the title, his " The Veiled Man " having been running serially in the Idler since October. In these circumstances Messrs Pearson at once altered their new book to " The Shrouded Fa^e." under whiz* title ii mil MOW be jagu^.

' • . • The authoress of "On the Face of tbe Waters " is a native of Harrore-on-the-Hill, having been born there just 50 years ago, but is Scotch on, both sides of her pedigiea, When only 20 Mrs Steel married a man whom sbe had known since they were small children together. He was an Indian civilian, and she thus went straight to India before a decade of years had d ailed the memory or clouded the atmosphere of the i"lndiani "lndian mutiny. Here was tbe inspiration of •' On the Face of the Waters." As a girl she did very little writing, and when she did begin it was with the inevitable

verse. Her first remembered production was a hymn, and for a long while it remained her ocly effort.

■ . • According to a statement in the New York Critic, Dr Nansen was pressed to cake up a professorship in-America by Dr Jordan, now president of Stanford University, when he was president of the University of Indiana, 10 years ago, and the hardy Norwegian was Lben a yoncg man of seven-and-tweafcy. Travelling through the State of Indiana thb winter, Nanten remarked to his manager : " They offered me the professorship of zoology in the university here, and I came very near accepting it. I was then contemplating my first trip to Greenland, and is was a question with me as to whether I should go to America and take this professorship or undertake my expedition to Greenland. It required a great deal of deliberation, but finally 1^ made up my mind aud declined the professorship."

• . • The British Museum possesses a collection of books -which have a carious history. They were once the property of Pricco Jerome Bonaparte, and were in the Pateu Boyal at the time of its destruction, ana they still bear tho traces of the fire. They were gent to tbe Prince's home in Swifz-r-land, whence they found their way into the hanaß of a bookseller in Geneva, wbo, in nis turn, sold them to tho Museum. Some of them belonged to the Prince's father, KS?>g Jerome of Westphalia, and these are marked ■with a" J " and a crown ; others, probably acquired by Prince Jerome before the Empire, are stamped as belonging; to the " Oitoyen " Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte. After the establishment of the Second Empire thia stamp bas given place to a larger "N," with the Imperial Eagle, in some place 3 only partly-obscuring the simple title of the " Citizen." The books seem to have shared in a marked degree tbe vicissitudes of their owners.

D'Aanutzio, the Italian poet and novelist, was introduced for the first time p few weeks back to tbe English reader in a translation of "11 Ttionfo della Morte." D'Ai&nuczio divides his romancss under the badges " of the lily " and " of the rose," designed parallelementy as Vsrlaine expiessed it, to express, one presumes, " the languors of virtue " and " the raptures of vice." " The Triumph of Death" zb a romance of the rose ; but there is more of the Istogaor of deliquescence about it and pallid hue of decomposition than of theraptara of pass>ion. Ifc is not ths hsalthjest nor the tersest of human productions — it is, indeed, notewori hy that jouog France, which is almost as •<%- cited about D'Anntmzio as young Italy, is content to put up with a severely abridged translation of this work. In tb*se Wignerisn dajs no doubt many readers wiil bz attracted to the book for the sake of the elaborate description it contains of the effect of. " Tristan und Isolde "at Bayreuth ; though it U not the most desirable advertisement of Wagner'e great work to represent ifc as the final and fatal inspiration of a homicidal erotomania c.

A MASTER OF ROMANCE.

Ths masters of prose fiction whose fame i« woi Id-wide are very few. One wbo belpr.gs to the few —the wonderful Frenchman who created Gil Bias cie Santillane— died, as we are reminded, 151 years ago. Alain Rece Le Sage was born in 1668, at Saizcsu, in Britiany. Ualike other illustrious sou's of the province, his genius had no association ■with his birthplace, which be left eerly, never apparently to return. His was a long life, and for the most part full o£ ill-fortune. He was admitted ss an advocate at the Paris B.3tr, bub got no practice. Having no money and no prospects, as Mr Leslie Stephen would say, he naturally married. Then he drifted into letters. He turned to Spanish literature, translated and adapted plays and noveis, wrote diligently for the theatre, taming out a vast quantity of work very unequal in quality, and achieved at least two brilliant; successes. Worn out at 70, he retired to Boulogne, whera one of hia sons held a cauonry. There, on November 17, 1747, be died. In other countries besides his own, Le Saga is a man of one book, and that one, of course, " Gil Bias." Like Shakespeare, like Moliere, like Dryden, be was an indiscriminate borrower. Spanish literature was his inspiration and his quarry. Even " Gil Bias " is claimed for Spain, but there is no evidence to warrant tbe claim. He is unmistakably French in all except surroundings. La Sage is not of those who are able to sound the deep places of life and character, but he is an unsurpassed observer and delineator of things on the surface. " Gil Bias " is a novel of manners in the style carried to such astonishing perfection in the last century. There is no plot ; one oan see no reason why it should ever finish any more than the stories of Alexandre Damas. There is story within story, incident and endless digression, loosely strung and without effort. And what scenes, what people, what manners and humours 1 Tbe Spain of two centuries ago lives and breathes in this extraordinary book : actors, lawyers, courtier*, students, brigands, priests, signoras— -we know them all, as though they peopled the London o£ to-day. Some of the episodes have become tbe common property of speakers and writers everywhere. Dr Sangrado and the cold water and Gil Bias's imprudent criticism of the Archbishop's bad sermon are Instances in point. Le Sage wrote in an age of excessive license. " Gil Bias " deals with a society of sufficient laxity, bat it eicapes the tainfe. Its .author was no moralist, but neither was he a libertine. His delight was in the moving life aronnd ; he did not preach to it, and he did not give way to its grossness. His tone is fresh and sound. Gil Bias is a living and priceless creation ; be belongs, with Falstaff and Quixote and Tristram Shandy, to tha number of those fictitious characters wad have added to the continual happi^lS o2 rn.aDk.jniU