LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2561, 6 May 1903, Page 65

LITERARY NOTES.

—It is probable that this year ~Mr An(lrew Lang will pay a long-contemplated visit to the United States, and may travel ■»s far as Samoa in order to form acquaintance with the exile-home and haunts of hi 9 old-time friend Stevenson. Mr Lang will finish the third and concluding volume of his "History of Scotland" this year, when, it is said, he will begin the preparation of a complete edition of hia workE. — Editors testify with increasing unanimity (says Dr Robertson Nicol, in the Sketch) that the serials which maintain and increase the circulation of their periodicals must be written as serials — that is, they must be divided into parts and each part must end with a curtain. Novelists say that to do this is to spoil the book. A popular novelist, however, sacrifices co much by giving up serial publication that I fancy a way out of the difficulty will be- found. — There never wag much mystery as to the authorship of that ckve-r satire, "The laves of the 'Lttstrious," which came out a year or two ago. What mystery there may iave been vanishes before the- initials under the preface to a new volume "by the authors" of the "Lives." This is their "Wijdom While You Wait," which originally was issued privately, and now appears in published form. For "E. "V. L." one may securely read Mr E. V. Lucas, and for "C. L. G.," Mr C. L. Graves— both gtod humorists. Thinking that the book maj l one day be in quest with collectors. Mesers febister are issuing a specially bound edition of it.

— Walter Scott is as free from partisanship in his novels as he is from personality. He was a high Tory and worshipper of Monarchy. He reverently preserved in his coat pocket the sacred: glass out of which George IV had drunk, and afterwards, in absence of mind, sat down upon it. In his ecstasy at tho sight of a Coronation he almost verges on senility. Yet he paintswith equal gusto and with equal fairness Cavalier and Roundhead, High Churchman and Covenanter. No one ever wrote such tales as his. Everything in them is noble and true. The air which their reader breathes is as pure and bracing as that of the heathery hills of Scotland. Why cannot people go back to them? — Gold win Smith.

— The deadly effect of the present rush in writing and reading is the theme of a •treatise on "The- Lost Art of Rendine (Putnams), in which the author, Mr Gerald Stanley Lee (whose own manner lacks repose), denounces the "bugbear of b^ing wellinformed," and proposes an "Ignoramu3 Crab." He has also much to say against libraries, Mr Carnegie's and others, only hs is not co terse about it a3 Mr Doolty, who remarks that libraries help literature about as much as tombstones help life-. Mr Lee also introduces the Desert Island test. Inetead, however, of asking whaf books one would choose to have with one in that prejicametnt he makes it the test of tho wisdom of a man's previous reading that he should be a<b!e to do without books altogether on his desert island

—Mr Andrew Lang, in the introduction which he contributes to the George Douglas Brown Memoir volume, just issued by Hodder and Stoughton, has a word in defenco of the "Kailyard school." He says: — "That school, I venture to assert, has by dint of a clever nickname come to be unduly despised 'en masse ' by persons of culture ; I mean of tho kind of culture that is the Aild, not of experience, but of casual veerings of opinion. You may call Burns and Hogg Kailyard poets. You may call Bcott's best passages of rural life and character and most of Gait Kailyard. Nicknames, like blank verse, are net argument. •Many excellent, some really admirable, works have been executed by Kailvarders Not aH of them wallow naked in the pathetic or serve up death-bed scenes."

— Various and contradictory reports (says the Westminster Gazette) have apppared here and in America as to the personality of Michael Fairless, the author of "The Roadmender." which was published in the early part of last year, and has since been reprinted six times. Fairless was one of the Christian names of a woman who gave up a great portion of a short life to work amonjj many grades of poor people, and "The Roadmendcr" gives in the main hpr real experiences. Her life was foo fully occupied to allow her to write anything until she was pro3trated by illness in 1900. This book was written during the- physical disability and pain of her last illness, and in the last two sections it' faithfully portrays the last stages of her life, which were spent in Chelsea and in Sussex.

.—. — Dr Dabbs, who was for 25 years closely associated with the late Lord Tennyson in tfie capacity of medical attendant prints some of his reminiscences in the February number of "Yeetis." The doctoi had " great admiration for the ' whole-hearted loyalty of the post toward those who advised him: — "He was absolutely inoapable of any sly deception as to other advice ; if lip did not like your treatment he c a d =o. and in remarkably plain langua-ge. If he« thought your estimate of hi<3 condition was •erroneous, he asked you for your leasons, and when you gave them he put them through a furnace of criticism which was of tbe mosf biting prose, and jji no sense idy'lic. But he was Iruo and straight. He might not always be complimentary, but ho •was always a man who .houghi and spoke as a man." The 6ubt©rhige of a hidden meaning or a deluding impress-ion Tennyson, Dr Dabbs adds, would have scorned.

— It is said by observers among ourselves that the prudish habit of mind is dying out, and this is looked upon as a satisfactory thing, as a sign of healthy emancipation. If by prude be meant a secretly vicious person who affects an excessive decorum, by all means let the prude disappear, even at the cost of some shamelessne>r9. If, on the jther hand, a prude is one who, living a de-cent life, cultivates, either by bpnt or principle, a somewhat extreme delicacy of thought and speech with regard to*lementary facts of human nature, then I say that this is most emnhatically a fault in the right direction, and I have no desire to c cc its prevalence diminish. . . We who know Englishwomen- by thf -xpfrience of a .lifetime are well awarp that their rarpful choice of language betokens, far more often than not, a corresponding delraov of mind.

— "F«nry Rvecroft," by Georg-p Ois=ine. — The first thing (says rh« We-tnvnste-r Gazetted that strikes on° on clancinir through 'he Ion? li=f of pnthoi-s in th«» "L'tcnrv Y^nv Book" for 19^3 (Ooor^p AMen) is tlmr whilp ,in ovrrwliplmii " majonrv of tWo g<»nt!<?ino-p 'Jiinnh* )'>o dl**d I *** 1 ' of Hi" 1r bi rf li ■with a plp»*in» tmnkn«-.i. rrniv one lncrv oathni ia 2H *• siUum to aakaoHlfitiae bow

old she is. It may be that our writers of the gentler sex are generally of the opinion of their illustrious predecessor, Madame de Stael, that a "woman is the age she looks." On the other hand, there is only one lady author who "desires her address to be withheld," and, knowing how much she dislikes advertisement, we would not for worlds reveal it. There is seme amusing reading here and there in the section of the "Year Book" called "The Contributor's Guide." The editors of various periodicals plead for stories with "conventional pleasant endings." One desires "no mud or blood"' to be sent him : another solicits articles on sul> jects treated from a "surprisng" point of view ; while the conductor of a commercial organ announces that "articles scoldiner the British manufactures are not invited."

— A young reader should begin Browning with the study of that one sublime poem. "Saul," and, after giving more or less time to the ingenuities, the energies, and the complexities of the vest, he should co to the reading of "Saul" again. There is in this glorious work a difference in th-e quality as well as in the degTee of poetry. Loftythoughts there are elsewhere, as in Abt Vogler . . . but "Saul" has the e^ctasy of the- yonder side, the ecstasy that is beyond imagery and thought, and yet is the •nearest thing in the world and the closest to the soul. After the spiritual, intellectual, and natural greatness of "Saul " come the ingenious wi-dom of "One Word More," the simple passion of "Love Am^ng the Ruin-5," and the "integrity and fire" in others of the love-poems, especially when a woman is supposed to speak ; the very subtle eyesight of "By the Fireside," and indeed the fine sense of plaro that appears in nearly all the poeme on Italy. All these are the work of a man of genius, and intelligible to plain and young people. — Mrs Meynell.

— Messrs James MaeLehotise arid Sons, publishers to the University of Glasjrow, have in the press a complete edition of Hakluyt's collection of "The Principal Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries of the English Nation." This great work was first published in 1589, and a second edition, rev wed and enlarged by Hakluyt, was printed in 1598-1600. The eollpetion was i-eprinted in limited editions in London in 1809, and in Edinburgh in 1885, but these reprints, like the originals, have become very scarce md costly. The aim of the publishers in the new issue is to render accessible to all interested in early voyages and adventures an accurate and beautifuPy printed text from the edition of 1598-1600. Profpssor "Walter Kaleigh has agrepd to write an essay on the life and work of Hakluyt, which will complete the whole It will be illustrated from contemporary portraits and maps, will contain a full index, and will be printed from a Caslon fount at the UnivP-rsity Pross, Glasgow, on antique pap-er The edition will be strictly limited, and sold in -jomplete sets only. The first volume is in the press, and will be published shortly, and it is hoped to complete the whole within two years