LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2511, 30 April 1902, Page 70

LITERARY NOTES.

—To the collected edition of Mr O. W. Stce\ens'& wiitings, Messrs Blackvnod are about to add "Monologues of the Dead It will conclude the edition. — Scholarly and handsome edition* of three great books in English liteiaturo are arnotmccd by Messrs Mcthucn Tlxy are Carlyle's "French Revolution," his "Life and Letters of Oliver Cromwell," and Macaulay's "Critical and Historical Essays." — We are at last to have a life of Mazzini by an eminently qualified writer. It is stated tl.at Mr Bolton King lias undertaken to write the biography of Mazzini for M.f=: s Dent'b series of Saintly Live«. Mr Kind's great work on Italian unity is remarkable for its mastery of the subject and its- deep sympathy with the passion of Mazzuii'b life. —As it is exceedingly difficult now to obtain a copy of the poems of Robert Fergusson, who' influenced Burns fo profoundly, ninny students of literature v.-ill be glad to know that a complete edition of Ferguson's work', both Hoc t eh and English, ifi in the prr*.. and will shortly be published by Mr Caidner. of Pai-ley. Tlu> book is being jvoduced uncli'r tho pd'tcnal nupervi-ion of Mr Ford, who will write a biographical and critical introduction to tho poem. 1 -. — The volume on "Labour Legislation, Labour Mo\ements, and Labour Leader?," by Mr George How ell, formerly member of Parliament for Bethnal Green, which Mr Fisher Unwin will publish this season, is a comprehensive record of the progress of labour during the past 100 year?. It deals with the economic conditions at the beginning of the nineteenth century, then with the subsequent remedial legislation, the lahour rnoven>ents, and legislative advances from tho forties onwards. — The Rev. R. Baring-Gould, who ha,s just attained hu sixty-eighth birthday, is one of the most industrious of English writcis Since, in 1854. he published his fir.=t book. "The Path of the Just," more than 80 separate work?, several of them fxteiidintj to a series of volumrs, s&nd to his name. It is 21 yeais j-ince " Mehalah," one of the mo&t popular of his books, came from his pen, with which. hi« numerous friPnds will be glad to lcara, ho is still busy. — The ppcond volume of Mr Walter Sichcl's "BohngbroU© and His Time&" is to be published by Messrs J Nisbet and Cn ra-lv in thp spring. It will contain a cri-ii<-al ana!y=.= of Bohngbroke's difctinct career in set.unnce from 1715 till hi« death m 1751, a-, well pi of liic cvn<-. and persons which influfnrcd it and by whirh it was influenced. boll> m England and France. It is based on numerous unpublished manuscripts, tngethpr with counties- printed authorities, many o; thorn rarfc and hitherto unnoticed — ToK'oi i o t!io mopt spiritual of all modern vw-itt rs because ho is the writer , most concerned with the souls of men, and, hi* ''rcalisau" ihat nevai* fal-

eifies, but merely reveals the nature within us, shows up the thinness and poverty alike of that "idealism" which will not face Nature's grey teachings, and of that commonplace, mediocre, and trivial "realism" which merely asserts that its inspiring spirit is a thing pury aud cheap. — Academy. —Mr Swan Sonnenschein, the publisher, is also an author with scholarly tastes and a wide knowledge of English literature. He has been devoting himself to a work intended tc give the origin and history of phrases that have been, or are, current in English. He contemplated a general dictionary of phrases, but now finds his materials so great as to call for three separate, though allied, volumes. One, which maybe ready in the autumn, is to be a dictionary of phrases ; another a dictionary of literary parallels ; the third a dictionary of proverbs. — Messrs Cassel and Co. will shortly publish Mr John roster Eraser's new boola entitled "The Real Siberia." Mr Fraser spsnfe a good part of last year in traversing Siberia from end to end. He journeyed from Moscow to Tladivostock, and made a dash across Manchuria, which at the time was closed by th? Russians to foreigners'. The contents of 'Mr Fraser's work will be of an exceedingly interesting character, and the illustrations equally so, many of them being taken under great difficulties. There will be 60 illustrations in the work — about 30 being full-page. —Mr Hall Caine's quarrel with Messrs Pearson has been settled out of court. Each party pays his own costs, and the authorj who was to have received £2000 for th» serial rights of his story, is paid only for what has been pupblished in the Lady's Magazine. "The Eternal City" is now appearing in Household "Words (lately acquired by Mr Hall Caine's son), and the novelist prefaces a somewhat grandiloquent "Foreword" to the first instalment. In this he pay:*, alluding to the objection raised by Pearson's to the character of the work:-" " ' The Eternal City,' like the great book I have referred to, ' David Copperfield,' has besn publicly insulted by a charge of immorality, and in offering my story for its first complete serial publication in this country to the pi;b!ic of Household Words, which Dickeus created, I feel justified in the belief that theie is nothing in my workt whirh wrongs the traditions his name established." — The Saturday Review publishes a touching sonnet to Mr George Meredith, "on his seventy-fourth birthday," by Mr Theodore Watts-Dunton, one of the novelist's oldest and closest friend?. The poet says that it is evening with his friend, but "evening bright as 110021" : — Still he is spared — while Spring and Winter, meeting, Clasp hands around the roots, 'neath frozen dew, To sea the " Joy of Earth " break forth anew. The allusion is to Mr Meredith's delightful volume, '"Poenn and Lyrics of the Joy of Earth. The sonnet concludes with this fine sextet: — Love's remnant melts and me'.ts ; but, if our dsya Arc swifter than i> weaver's shuttle, still, Still Winter has a sun — a sun who3e rays Can set the young lamb dancing ou the hill, And set the daisy, in the woodland ways, Dreaming of. her who brings the daffodil. — Messrs Longman will shortly publish a volume of "Historical Essays," written by members of the Owens College, Manchester. The essays, 20 in number, are all based on original investigation, and in several ca«es utilise -unpublished materials. The volume is edited "by Professor Tout and Mr James Tait, who respectively contribute articles 011 the Baron-,' War in "Wales and on the murder of Thomas, Duke of Gloucester. Among the oilier contributors are two former Professors of History— the late Mr Christie and the Master of Peterhouse. Among the former students who contribute are Mr Spenser Wilkinson on Napoleon, the first pha B e ; Mr .f. Holland Rose on Napoleon at St. Helena; Mr Robert Dunlop on Henry VIII' s Irish policy;' Dr W. A Shaw on the origins of the National debt ; Profe P =ior G. A. Wood on the Miltonio ideal; and Mr W. E. Rhodes on. the Italian benker.-. 1:1 England under Edwards 1 and 11. — The interesting announcement is made 111 the Times Literary Supplement that it is probable Mr E. T. Cook wi*l undertake the gen?ral editorship, under Mr Wedderburn, K.C., of the new edition of Ruskin's works which Mr George Allen has had in preparation during the past two years. The new edition is to bo in 30 volumes, ariangpd in chronological order, a:id published at the rate of about one volume a .month. New matter has been, fi.und fcr almost every work, but this will be added to tLe volumes without disturbing the pre-'f'nt arrangement of the text. It 13 hoped that t'm fir^t volume may be readybefore the ond of the year. It was of Mr E. T. Cook that John Ruskm once said tl.at he knew more about his books than -h<" did himself. Mr Cook's "Studies in Ruskin" i= tho be=t handbook to tho teachings of the master that liar yet been written. — George Eliot, according to the late F. W H. Myeri-, was accused of making copy out of her own household. A too sympathising friend ooudcled with her domestio tioubifrs, on the mistaken assumption that Mr Casaubon. in "Middlemarch," was a. portrait of G. H. Lewe». No two men. could differ more widely. "But from whom. then," said a friend to Georere Eliot, "did you draw CasaubonV "With a humorous solemnity, which was quite in earnest, however, site pointed to her own heart." One wonders if she va? thinking of th» sonnet which describes Sidney's perplexed search for a poetical subjeot, until : "Fcol!" said my Muse, "look in thy heaifc and write. ' This lead? us into a field too wide to cover — that of autobiographic fiction. Every writer has liad a <.hot at that — Dickens was Coppprfielrl, Tlwfcer.'Y was Pendennis, leliiing was Captain Booth, Sir Charles firandi>-on repi c&cntcd the fat little printer's idc-a of what 1-e could have been as a man of fashion— even Mr Kiplmg has not disdained to depict himself a-, the "inky schoolboy " — Daily Newr.

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