LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2646, 30 November 1904, Page 74

LITERARY NOTES.

— The AthenEeum announces tliat Mr M. H. Spielma nn has 'been selected to write the official biography of the late Mr G. F. Watts. Mr iSpielmann is the editor ablest art critics of the day. — A new pictorial edition of "JEsop's Fables" has been issued by the Messrs Cass-elf (7s od). It has a great wealth of illustrations, many of which have been prepared expressly by Miss Maud Clarke, who lias achieved distinguished success as a painter of . animals. The character with which Miss Clarke has endbwed her , creations does much, to heighten the interest of the narrative. — The next addition to the "English Men of Letters" series is on "Adam Smith," a ,very timely publication. This has very suitably been undertaken by Mr Francis W. Hirst, who has shown in the- past, thafc ihe is able to write on economics without being dull. The i "Adam Smith" will be followed in November by "Thomas Moore," written by Mi\ Stephen G-wynn. — There is a 'pleasant article in the Fortnightly Review on Thomas Campbell, by Mr Arthur Symons. Why was Campbell once so famous? Why is he now neglected? Thus does Mr Symons suan up the situation: — "Always labouring to be 'at once ennobled) and correct,' Campbell is never visited by any poatie inspiration, except in those few poems in which he has not been more sincere, or chosen better, than usual, but has been more lucky, and able to carry an uncertain technique further. That, and not emotion, or sincerity, - or anything else, is what distinguishes > what is good from what is bad in his work, even in those poems which have given our literature its greatest war-songs." ■ —It is pleasant sometimes to hear a man "talk shop," .especially if he is a distinguished! man working in a great shop. Dean Hole, in his book, "Then and Now," has some humorous and wise things to say about his own profession, preaching. "We want simplicity," he says, "to speak in a tongue that is "understanded of the people.' Mo Here used to read his comedies to an old, uneducated woman, that he might judge by the manner in which she was affected' how his wit and! humour would be received by the people. I cculd name some poor old folks whose opinion. 1 shoxild rather have about a sermon of mine than that of men in high estate. 'Tell me the story simply, as to a little child ! ' ciies the heart that yearns for truth ; but come preachers take pleasure in grandiloquence, mysteries, metaphysics. A famous classical scholar, preaching to a small congregation of rustics in Jthe Lake District, said: to them, 'In this beautiful country, my brethren, you have an apotheosis of nature and an a2)odeiknensis of theopratio omnipotence.' " — Sir Theodore Martin, who celebrated his eighty-eightffh birthday the other day, is one of the most interesting and remarkable personalities of the day. Poet, solicitor, humorist, parliamentary agent, biographer, Sir Theodore has carried on his profession almost without intermission, close upon 70 years. His first Jiostage to the '"Republic of Letters" bears date 1838; his latest volume of poems was issued three years ago. In tho interim (says the St. James's Gazette) have come the evergreen Bon Gaultier Ballads, the finest translation of Goethe that has seen the light; metrical translations of Horace, Virgil, Catullus, of Dante, Schiller, Heine, the famous Life of the Prince Consort, half a dozen other biographies equally charming, and poems innumerable. He was born the year after Waterloo, and l he is still the active head of Martin and Leslie, the firm of parliamentary solicitors which he himself started 10 years before the Crimean war. Three years before that event he had married Helen Faucit. The intimate friend of the great lite-rary workers of his youth and middle age, Sir Theodore's reminiscences should prove delightful reading. Buhver Lytton, Dickens, Thackeray, Tenuyson, the Brownings, Kingsley, Froucle, George Eliot — all were cronies of the "parchment poet of Abingdon street,"' as his collaborator, Professor Aytoun, called: him. — The author of "The Unspeakable Scot" is much exercised) in his mind as to the change which, he declares, has somewhat recently come over the, opinions entertained of our friends the Japanese. He has, therefore, given us the "Truth About Japan" — (London : Grant Richards ; price, Is net)— which is written less dispassionately than some of his other works ; indeed, there is a strong flavour of .spleen, in his satire. Those who have lately made more of the Japanese than they really deserve have not, perhaps-, erred to a greater extent than Mr Crosland lias now done in the opposite direction, and if those who, having leacl the one set of authorities, will now ve<ad the otlier as brought forward by Mr Crosland', they will probably be able to arrh-e at a cgjreofc estimate, pf Japan, by,

steering a middle cour-e. "It is a grave question,'" -writes Mr Orosland, "whether Japan, with her marvellous gifts of imitation, her extraordinary energy, her cunning rapidity, and her total want of conscience, is in the least hbely to become ' a world Power.' " He has no doubt whatever that she will never be other than _ pagan and heathen, and cruel and unconscionable under the surface. There is a good deal more in the same strain, the author in some instances being very much more severe in his strictures than the writers from whom, he quotes. Indeed, if all fchat Mr Croslandi has set down in this little book against the Japanese were beyond doubt, one would! be disposed to exclaim with him that "because the Japanese aro ' little ' and ' plucky ' and a novelty . . . it is not to say thafc they are worthy to stand with the mighty." But Mr Crosland has not made use of weapons calculated to convince one that he is right in his estimate. — Field. — George Sand! was the frank "and. ' free daughter of the Romantic movement. Though she bowed the knee of allegiance to Jean- Jacques, though she willingly wore the golden fetters of "Byronism, as Byronism. was understood in France, she eagerly shook off all ' the restraints whioh controlled the life and literature of the classic age. Her earliest passion was revolt against .sex, against usage, against tradition. She must needs wear the trousers, because the petticoat was the ordained garb of woman. She must smoke an enormous and obtrusive pipe, because a dainty cigarette would not sufficiently advertise her emancipation. It was not for nothing that she carried in her veins* the blood of the illustrious Mareehal de Saxe, for the combat was ever a joy to her, and she went into the battle* of the wits, chanting as shrill a war-song as any of them" Her early books were, on© and all, trumpet-calls, and in them she led the attack upon all the honoured institutions of France. Marriage, the 1 •Church, the law, society — she tilted at them all with an astounding energy, andi with a recklessness whioh proved how little she understood either their qualities or defects. The prevailing passion for the picturesque urged her to turn bandits into philosophers, and to detect an excellence in whatever was strange or rebellious to oustom; and, since it was part of the movement that artists should be preachers, she delivered an ardent sermon as easily as she sketched a romantic landscape". She was a moralist always, although in her youth she confused the familiar terms, and there is truth as well as wit in Baudelaire's denunciation. "La femma Sand," said he, "esfc le Prudhomme de l'immoralite."—Charles Whibley, in Blackwood's Magazine. — One of the- inquiring souls who find editors in a melting mood demands a, short answer to the question — what reoenfe year we have to set in literature against; 1859, with its "Adam Bede," "Tale of Two Cities," "Idylls of the King," and! "The Origin of Species"? This species of comparison is so unintelligent that the shortest answer would be to examine the gentleman's bumps. But if he means to imply that no single year at the end of the century maJ- four real contributions to literature, )• <?uly despondent, or does not makt cc for the stress of the authority 0.. _ jies already classic. Looking back 'rather afc random through the nineties, one remembers for one year "Po&ms by the Way," "Tess," "Life's Handicap," and "One of Our Conquerors"; for another, "The Goldeii Bough," Mahan'* "Sea Power," "Wordsworth's Grave," and Mr Henley's -"Views and Reviews"; for another, . "Barrack-room Ballads," the "Death of CEnono" volume, Parkman's "Half-century of Conflict," and Stevenson's "Across the Plains"; for another, Miss Rossetti's "Verses," Pater's "Plato," the "Verney Memoirs," and Pearson's "National Life and Character"; for another, "Lord Ormont," "Life's Little Ironies," "Astrophel," or Mr Robert Bridge's new "Shorter Poems," and Forbes Mitchell's "Reminiscences of the Great Mutiny" ; for another, Froude's "English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century," "Jude the Obscure," "The Amazing Marriage" (Meredith tJie obscure and the amazing Hardy, as the jest of the day went), and a "Jungle Book." But no critic is concerned to deny thafc there has been some inevitable reaction after the great burst of the early nineteenth century in creative literature.— St. James s Gazette.