LITERARY MOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2671, 24 May 1905, Page 69

LITERARY MOTES.

—Mr Edward Thomas, writing in the World on Mr Cunninghame Graham's -new book, " Progress and Other Sketches " (Duckworth), says he 'knows no author ?<- consistent as Mr Graham, and so i---n ably and helplessly true rto -himself. xi*, ■writes with one foot in the stirrup. He is rioh in genuine new combinations of words and things that stick like proverbs. —Mr Henry James .has suddenly -become the most interesting literary personality of the age, both in England and in America. This vogfue has arrived after a period of comparative obscurity. His new -book, " The Golden Bowl," was published in America some time ago, and the papers gave it most unusual attention. We have it in England at \last (says Dr Robertson Nicol, in the Sketch), .and everyone is discussing it, while the reviewers have braced themselves to confront its mysteries worthily. — 'We get manuscripts at the rate of nearly three every working day of the • year," said "Mr John Murray to a writer in .-the first number of the Literary World as *, mid-monthly. The figures 6&ow at wihat a rate hooks are boing made, even if they are not -always published. Mr Murray j agrees with other observers that we scarcely j live in a time when poetry is appreciated, but he notes the distinct revival which there has been in Byron. As a penny weekly the Literary World long did good service, and as a threepenny monthly, with pictures, it will, no doubt, have a new career of usefulness. — "In Peril of Change" is a series of ' essays fey Mr Charles F. G. Masterman, dealing with sx. number of literary and reli- { gious subjects, and bound together by a common -trend eff thought. Mr Masterman passes in review some typical modern writers and thinkers; he shows how the best thought of the time is and has been the precursor of .progress; how in this department of life, now in that, activity 16 being developed from theory ; and how the thinkers -who have recently passed away are naturally demarcated from the thinkers who are to the fore to-day. Mi Masterman's book will be published by Mr Fisher Unwin. — Mr Frederic Harrison has been enrolled (says the Westminster Gazette) in the ranks of authorship for the long period of 43 years. His boofcs make a goodly list. It may not "be generally remembered that Mr Harrison some of his early years at the Bar to the dreary work of law reporting, having as his colleagues on a now long defunct series of reports a host of men who, like him, were destined to distinguish themselves in other spheres than that of law reporting I—men1 — men like Lord Herschell, Lord Bowen, Lord Davey, Mr Speaker Gully, and Mr Leonard Courtney. It is also interesting to recall that it was Mr Harrison who wrote the legal opinion given in "Felix Holt," solving a. knotty problem which had puzzled the gifted authoress of that famous novel.

— Whatever education has done it has not raised the standard of tasto in literature. It has lowered it. Popularity in our time does not mean what it meant when

"Waverley" was published. It means more and it means less, for what it has gained in quantity it has lost in quality. Tho board schools and the newspapers have dragged the people up to literature, but they have also dragged literature down to the people. No artist can now afford to be popular, for the path of popularity is no longer the path of art. Our writers keep on© eye on, their ideal and tlie

other on the mob. Grant Allen killed Iris talent by trying to serve these two masters. — James Douglas. — Quito a number of popular novelists do all their work in the open air, and say that their l->c=l work has been done when they were soared in rhc sunshine in the hottest weather. At hor room in VeniCO, Marie Corelli U.is a v ondorful sunshine room — a veritable hanging garden. It is th-3 back piazza 6f an old "Venetian house, with no walls or rail.ngs, save a heavy screen of vinos, which makes it seem to bang suspsndod from the =ide of the house. It was here, in a perfect Ma/c of sunshine, % ' The Master Christian"' wa^ written. On a real roof-garden at her London house, Airs Humphry Ward wrot° many of her novels. She had it fitted up like a regular room, and on dull, dark days lighted with lamps fitted into wind-proof globes. In a, n-odest little grey house near Tunbridge Wells, Kent, lives Sarah Grand, axithor of " The Heavenly IVins. ' Per vorik is done in the sunny bay window of a cosy den. The room is handsomely and tastefully furnished with easy window-seats, book-cases, rugs, and fine paintings. On her mahogany desk stands an engraving of Dudley Bardy"s picture cf the destitute pool* of London : this, that she may never forget the suffering in the world. —It has often happened in t. . of genius {writes Joseph Matton in cigarette Papers) that long -after the publio has allowed a man to die of neglcet and want of appreciation it has erected a monument to his memory. It must be said to cur honour, however, that, as regards Dickens, he reaped the reward of his genius in his own day. He was the idol of two hemispheres. Notwithstanding hi* seating revelations of certain shortcomings of our cousins in the early Jays of their public life, they recognised his power, and found! excuse for him in his no less trenchant) satire of the abuses of the Old World as well as the New. In admiration and love and financial reward he was repaid — to money, compared with the prosperity of, possibly, his princijman, but he was content. That sun- . s no reason why the law should decree that the property be had created should during the lifetime of his children be taken out of their control and profit, and given over to anybody who might choose to pick it up. —Mr JL'. Fisher CJnwjn April 17 in his Colonial Library x-u_t - Dawson's new novel, " The Fortunes' ->t Farthings." The Athenaeum (London) says of the work: "Mr Dawson's new boclk will delight his old admirers, and should win him many new ones. It is a romance of real rustic simplicity, describing the love "•f a Dorset couple in the eaxly eighteenth ntury. The scene is laid in Marnell village, in the vale of Blakemore (the same, if we mistake not, that gave birth to Mr Hardy's ' Tess ') ; -the local colour is well laid on, and the notes- of that rich and varied scenery admirably expressed, without ever being unduly emphasised. Both the descriptions and the characterisation of the Moorish part of the book are extremely vivid, . and form in their gorgeous barbarism and Oriental violence a fine contrast to the soft and lucid setting of the most Saxon part of England. All the characters are strongly imagined, and without any elaborate technique we are -made to realise the spirit of the pastoral England r the eighteenth century and the mingled iror and humour of the doings of Moulai Ismail. 'The Fortunes a: of Farthings' is one of those novels — rare indeed nowadays — which give rest to the reader wearied with the rush of life or tired of it=- intricacies." — Said the auctioneer, holding up a pair ■of antique silver candlesticks. : "Give m-a • start." "Fourpence!" "What!" exclaimed the horrified auctioneer. "Ah," said the bidder. "I thought that would give him a start!" It did. — "Darling,"" exclaimed the happy husband, after the minister had pronounced the fatal -words, "1 am not worthy of you." "Of oouraß you are not," ahe replied, "but after a girl has oelebrated her twenty-fifth birthday for five eonseootive yean, dh« I «ant afford to b* too particular.**