LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2310, 9 June 1898, Page 50

LITERARY NOTES.

-t- Messrs J. M- Dent and Co. will publish, towards the end of April, T. Nash's " A Spring Song," with illustrations by Mr L. Leslie Brooke, printed in colours by Mr Ed mund Evans.

— Poe has left behind him a cosmopolitan j reputation; even now the citizens of Lyons j are offering a prize to anyone who will write | in French such tales as Poe invented, and we may be quite sure of the immortality of the " Gold Bug." — Literature. 7 - Great as the kings of literature are great, great like Scott or Goethe, Hugo or Dumas, we would hot say Miss Austen was. Her j painting, as she truly said, was the paint- | ing of a miniature, not the great canvas of a> mighty master's brush. Her taste and wisdom are best seen in the way in which she realised her limits and never tried to overstep them. But among the kings of humour, Miss Atisten, as a woman, holds a sovereignty part. — Speaker. — Mr P. W. Palliser has undertaken the task of providing a volume on "The Irish Rebellion of 1798," -in which the events of tnat period will be. dealt with and authorities given for the various statements. The writer is himself a Wexford man, and familiar with the localities where the principal events took place. The work will be published by Messrs Simpkin, Marshall, and Co. — YouthfuJ aspirants to literary honours - may take heart of grace from the experience of the late Mr James Payn. It is said that in the beginning' of his literary career he had 26 articles returned to him in one year. Yet he ventured to marry, soon after he had gradu- j ated at Cambridge, in reliance upon his pen for a living. It is not an example we should recommend to be followed by everyone. — Mrs Flora Annie Steel, the author of On the Face of the Waters," "In the Permanent ; Way," and other well-known stories, has been. for some time at Lucknow collecting materials for a Haw fltoxs* which is likejj to deal with.

the contrasting elements of the old and the new native society in that city. She is believed to be studying not only the impoverished Nawab, but the native barrister lately returned from E\irope,-and we make no doubt the result will' be effective. • — The use of unrhymed verse is the special characteristic of English poetry. It i 3 this more than anything else which separates our poetic literature from that of France and the literatures which France has influenced. Our two greatest poets, Shakespeare and Milton, wrote far more in blank verse than in rhyme, and there is not a single great poet between •- Marlowe and Dryden, and between Oowper and Tennyson, except Byron, who does not owe some of his most signal triumphs to the use of blank verse. — Spectator. — Chaucer was supremely the artist in the fabrication of his verses as well as in the construction of his plot and the telling of his story . . -. The story of his literary life is, in fact, a story of steady growth in which he gradually rose superior to the taste of his time, proved all things, found out that which was true, and held fast to that which was good. In the various eulogistic tributes that have been paid to the poet, it is rare that this technical excellence has* received- even- -cursory notice. In none of them has it ever been credited it with its full significance.— T. E. Lounsbury. —Mr Zangwill is the prose poet of atmosphere. In his book "Dreamers of" the Ghetto " he lifts the air from the seventeenth century; he enables us to breathe it. The blue skies of Smyrna, the waters of Venice, the colour and form of inedizeval Rome, the aroma of Poland, of Portugal, and of The Hague are reproduced, not by a painstaking and conscientious artist, but with the pencil of one tduehed with divine afflatus. How I r does it, and under what rules he produces hi«s effects, Ido not know, but it is there. Sliil the genius is Oriental; Semitic, not Aryan. The fires are lambent ; they illuminate, but do not warm. — Arnold White, in the. Academy. — "Ivanlioe" and " Kenil worth " lead off " The Century Scott," a complete pocket edition of the novels in 25 volumes, which Mr T. Fisher Unwin is bringing out this year. The type, though rather small, is readable, and the cloth binding, in dark green, with light green ornamentation, is tastefully neat. There is a charming frontispiece in each volume — Rowena- in " Ivanhoe," and " Amy Robsart in " Kenilworth." It was judged desirable not to add introductions and notes by another" hand than the author's.

— If we exoept- Byron's dramatic pieces and "Don Juan," the -first, draft of' Byron's longer poems ' formed but a nucleus of

the work as It 'was printed. For example "English -Bards and Scotch Reviewers ' grew out of the "British Bards," whila " The Giaour," by constant additions to the manuscript, the proofs, and even to the work after publication, was expanded to nearly twice its original size. . . . Whet*

the inspiration was on him, the printer had to

be kept at work- the greater part of the night, and fresh " copy " and fresh revises war© crossing one another hour by liour:— John Murray.

— Much interest will be felt in the birij<rr»graphical edition of Thackeray's complete

works -which Messrs Smith, Elder x and Co. are i to publish in 13 monthly volumes. This new . and revised -edition, comprises -* additional malarial and hitherto unpublished letters, sketches, and drawings derived from the j author's., original manuscript and notebookI Each volume will have an introduction wrifc-

I ten by the novelists, surviving daughter, Mra j Richmond Ritchie. In the first volume, I " Vanity Fair," to be issued simultaneously in

England and America, will apuear a new portrait of Thackeray, a facsimile letter, many woodcuts, and other illustrations. — In a.n interesting address on Omar Khayyam at the Grosvernor-erescent Club, Mr Edward Heron-Allen reminded his audionce that the " Rubaiyat " was the express result of Fitzgerald's entire course of Persian- studies. There were many isolated lines and ideas, and more than one entire quatrain, .for which diligent study had revealed no corresponding passages in the original. In January, 1858, Fitz-

Gerald sent it to Fraser's Magazine foi publication, but it was not accepted. Eventually

it was printed, but the edition did not at first meet with success. It went. to the "penny box."- Later people were found who wero willing to pay 7gs for this ""gern of classics antiquity, and a copy was recently disposed of at an auction for £21. All this is now of course a twice-told tale to Khayyamists.

— It is an open secret that " Hal Dane "is the pen name of Mr Haldane M'Fall, who is a stepson of Mr 3 Sarah Grand. It is not true, however, as many persons suppose (the mistake has .even crept into "Who's Who") that " Sarah Grand " is a pen name. It is the one and only name by which the authoress wishes to be known. In fact, -we- are in a position to state positively that Mrs Sarah Grand adopted this -name some years ago ffor all, purposes, owing to the fact that her late husband had a great dislike to haying his name associated -with her ideas with a view to save liim annoyf ance. While" he- lived Mrs- Sarah 'Grand did j not feel able to publish any explanation,- and j the consequence to lier has been unpleasant ! from the suggestions of " eccentricity,'"" " conceit,'* or affectation, 4 ' so -charitably-made by and paragraph "writers in the press- "_ It, is well to remind the present generation, which talk glibly of war as a thing to I be entered upon with enthusiasm, what wasthe ! nature of the war entered into with a light i heart by France in 1870. For this purpose i the reproduction in Black and White of two photographs "of the shooting of hostages during the period of the Commune in Parts is an excellent object lesson. The photograph of the massacre in the Rue Haxo is the more terrible of the two, as it shows so many women among the executioners. But more awful even than this is the recorded fact that in six clays, May. 22 to May 27, over 50,000 citizens were killed by the military on the pretext of being Communists. Ia it any wonder that France tends to go mad when ifc contemplates the possibility of being again subjected to the horrors of foreign war, to be followed almost certainly by those of civil war in case of defeat? This does not show that the French have lost their martial valour, but that they hare a horror of being taken by surprise or of being betrayed — as they certainly were in 1870.

— The Rector's Wife: "Why. here is a safety-pin in the collection." . The Rector : " Yes ; I fancy the man who used to put in a trousers button is now married."

Do you kisow the quickest way to core a sprain or bruise, a burn or scald P Such injuries are very common and o&n be cured quickly if properly treated. Mr J. Amerman, of Forka P. 0., Columbia Co., P.*., says c — " I h*.ve never found anything to compare with Chamberlain's Pain Balm for sprains, bruises, ana burns. We

have* used it. in our family for teveral years, and \ feel that we caanot do without ifc.'^ tfne «i*tar 5 all leading Chemists