LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2623, 22 June 1904, Page 69

LITERARY NOTES.

— ■ \Vh"i the late Sir Kdwin Amok' =aid lio had composed "The Light of Asia" "m tho biiof intci-vah of days without leisure." ho hardly did justice- to the curious feat ho leally pei formed in reeling off all that blank verso >ex tempore. The poem was* actually improvised v«hen Sir Edwin, after a hard day's journalistic work, rested on th'> sofa evening by evening and dictated to his wife. This was hi--, second wife, an American lady, granddaughter of Dr Chanuiiia".

— The death of Mi»s Frances Power Cobbo recalls the fact that the daughters of the Irish Protestant gentry and cleigy have in m-a.nj'' instances attained literary fame. Miss Cobbe was the daughter of an Irish landlord, and the founder of her family was a Protestant Archbishop of Dublin in the •eighteenth century. Miss Edgeworth was also the daughter of an Irish landlord; Lody Wiklo and Mrs Hungorford were the daughters of Irish Protestant clergymen ; while Miss Emdly - Lawless is the daughter of a.n Irish peer. —Us Edward Berdop, who is widely known as an authodity on Browning, has vritten a "Browning Primer" for Messrs Routledge. Its aim is to ; ndicatc bricflj' the subjects h-eat^d in the different poems, cud to gi\e, in plain language, their main outlines. Dr Berdoe ."-ays in his preface: ''It has beer tLp fashion to call the poet cl'°c-ure. analytical, and introspective — and this by thos^ who have "never taken the pnin-j to learn really what he is. The truth is, he freq-aently deals with subjects that in their nature are profound; but, though he treats obscure matters deeply, it is not true to say that he deals with deep subjects obscurely "

— During the 30 yeais which have elapsed since Mrs L. B. Walford, whose fifty-ninth birthday occurred on Suudaj", April 22, ga%e h-er first book to the reading' public, ovef a G \ohmiics have come from her pen. The story "which flr«t made her tiamc known to Hid world was rejected, it may be recalled, by Charlotte Yonge as "not quiie in rhe. stjlo of tho Monthly Packet," but accepted with an encouraging- note from Mr John Blackwood, for "ilaga." For this story, '"Nan" — for which "I have displaced another =tcry for j-ours," t'is ■editor of Blachwood's wioto to Mrs Walforc I—she.1 — she. received £35, ?nl the talc, had al-o th© distmc'icn cf inch sion in 1875 in tlia first \nlume of the now series of '"Tales from Blackwood." — Westminster Gazette.

— ■ Mr Thomas Wright, of Olney, who has edited "Wi'liam Cowpe-r's Lictlers mid written the Life of .Edward FitzGerald, is engaged, say? Dr Robertson Nicoll, writing in the Sketch on a Life of Walter Pater. It remains to be seen how far Mr Wright will be allowed to use Pater : s unpublished letters and journals. If he has freedom to d>o so, the rebiilt should be very valuable. Meanwhile, we have a short biography from New York, written by Mr Ferris Grcsnsl&t and- published by M'Clure. Mr Grec-nslet does not ackl anything to the biographical facts already given in Mr Gos=e's article, bue he criticises elaborately Pater's .style and philosophy. H& speaks of what he calls the Alexandrian style of Pater's prose, of its beauty, its lucidity, its substance, freighted with the author's per-onality, as fay ;;s he desired to i?v>=al that personality. Reminded of the. old ti)n?3 of labour with tho file. Pater exclaimed, '"Ah. it is much oisk v now. It I aye lo:it? enough, no doubt I shall le.am quite to like writing."

—Mr Thomas Hardy is one of the- men in whom readers take a v><?r*onal interest.

Wlirn "Toss" was running in serial form, he acoehed Luaidicrls of letters imploring Inin to avert the catastrophe' which was thref.H-nhig his heroin?. His explanation o'. tho fat." of '"Tfss"' is characteristic. He visited St r nclipng<? fo»* local colour before writing the tragic chapter. If it hadn't been e uc'ii a dreadful day," ho said to a friend, '"it is probable that I shouldn't have decidod that Ti"-s mu-t die." Possibly it may not b? known that Mr Kipling refers to Mr Hardy in ©no of his privately-circulated poems.

. Lord of the "VVessex ccast, And all the lands thereby, ho sings. The least-liked of the Wosscx novelist's works is "Jude the Obscure." Curiously, Mr Hardy asserts that that is tho book of his which will live. There is one ■v ork oi his v. hich we sha.l not see during his lifetime — if at all. Ifc was his first stoiy, and called "The Poor Man and His Lady." Georgo Meredith lead it, saw genius in it, Lut advised a more restrained, conventional, social philo-opin'. Hardy withdrew it. an<l wrote instead. "Desperate Remedies."

— I =uppose there really v-ro people who think thai: a novel ought to be an accurate picture of life. "Mr Brown may not be aware," they say loftily, "that marquises do not generally pat their guests with the scup-jaxEo in animated conversation," o_r "A little oxperii-nce of East Rutland, as it really is, would hays taught Professor F inker that the ?cenc between the disinherited lady and the mad policeman is quite impossible and inconsistent with the spirit of the cotmtv." It is evident that these critics judge the novelist's creations etrictly as copies of existing: fact. It never occurs to them to think that they "may not be or pies of a: ythinsr. but creations of ihe divino human mind, outbreaks of the god in. Jones and Pinker. It never occurs to them to lvflect that a marquis who pats his gfiiest wuh the soup-lacUo is far more beautiful than any earthly marquis, far more beautiful than any known member cf that somewhat dingy and suburban but highly re ."pec-table class. It never occurs to them to dream that the mad policeman "(that finished and delightful study of character) is more than a mad policeman in East Rutland, that le is a mad policeman in a mad K.ist Rutland, in a mad England; in thr> mad universe of art. — C>. K. Chesterton, in the Bystander.

— Many of tho most brilliant passages i-i tho most brilliant books, most of tho bet th'Ygs in journalistic literature, have been written undor an impulse of impatience. Oi under the promptmsj of necessity, or with tlie inspiration that hr.s been the outcome of thought and study Thcro. is no such thing as a sudden capacity to write upon a theme with which you arc not acquainted : but there is an enthusiasm which amounts io inspiration that may giow out of jour d&?p knowledge of the subject, and there i-> the sublime inspiration of conviction and enthusiasm that enables the poet to coucentiate a world of meaning into a sentence. For example, "A thing of beauty is a ioy for ever." Pop© sa"d the things he had written fa.ste't had always pleased him. most. Diydcn wrote the- "Otfe on St. Cecilia's Day" at a sitting ; bub tho coiTectioms occupied him a fortnight. It is understood that

filifikespparo wrote '"The Mem- Wives oj W.n'lsor" in rhi> li»re that :t took Drydcn 1,0 correct his Ode. Seolt sail tho portions of his romances that flowed most rapidly ficrv lu= pen ahvaj-s obtained tho most apphuis?. Moore wrote quickly, but I rbchcxl laboriously ; =o alio did Dicken«. Oik- of tho most hrilliant battle description* of our time was written by Archibald Foibes while he was practically under fire, and had in his mind's eye t\v special needs of his paper in London — Josoph Hatton, in "Oigarctle Papers."