LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2685, 30 August 1905, Page 72

LITERARY NOTES.

—Mr Andrew Lang's translation of the delightful old French romance of "Aueassin and Nucolete," toid in the alternate prose and verse of the cameo fable, has been reprinted several times since it first appeared in 1887, but hithorto there has been no illustrated edition. This omission lias now been remedied by Messrs Rourlcdge's publication of a charming edition of the story with 12 photogravures after drawings by Air Gilbert James. It forms one of the "Photogra\ure iSbries" (price 3s 6d per volume!, for which illustrated editions of "The Initial ion of Christ," Matthew Arnold's poems, and Milton's "Comus" are ;n; n pieparation.

—Mr Barry Pdin ;s; s a writer whose powers ha\e never yet, we should say, been extended to the full, but "The Memoirs of Constantino Dix" (Fisher Ur.win) mark a welcome increase in the size of his subjects. Constantino . : a a philanthropist : ha Li also a burglar, and with this unusual combination Mr Pain, makes cle\er and | pretty play. Humour, of course, there is plenty. There is also ingenuity, such as would make the fortune of some of cur "detective" writers. And, besides, there is a good deal of human philosophy. In fact, tho thing is done as well as it oouid be. We hope the success of this admirable little study of character will tempt its author to wider and bigger work. — Field. — From the many stories that have been, pihited about Maxim Gorky's early life of voverty, the genera! designation of him its me "tramp aiifchor," and his persecution, by the Russian Government, an impression prevails that the leading writer of Russian fictioa of vo-day is a poor man and not at all a practical one. As a matter of fact, he is not only comparatively rich, but he has shown himself to be a good business man r.s well. H& organised ana 15 th° '"cad of one of the largest publishing concerns in. St. Petersburg, which issur-s the wo-ks of the best-known Russian authors Although the roncern— it is called the Knowledge Publishing Company— has been In business for only a few years, Gorky is said to have made £25,000 out of it in that time. — When Chatterton was engraged on the Rowley forgeries he oanne across ' sk>>?-oorn-e '' o variant of the Celtic slogan, or war-cry of the olaas. His philological i equipment was thinner than a lorger s i *.Wd be, and he mistook this for some kind of in-ii-fal and musical instrument— presumably Hem? misbd l.y the slang word K slug" or' "slog," to fight. fco he wrots : Some caught a slug-horn, and an onset wound. The word took Browning's fancy, and be immortalised it in that splendid b.t ol romantic unasioatioi, "Childe Roland to tuo Dark Tower Came,'' where the hero say*: Dauntless the slug-horn to my lips I set And blew, "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came." Thus the slug-horn is firmly established in literature. A painting of it, says the Manchester Guardian, has even appears in the Royal Academy, whicn sets the -cat of respectability on the invention of lgaoriI — Iho Literary World has lately been rcaucstins information as to the alleged dewdenoa of library ta*te among modern girls, and m reply the principal of one ct the provincial physical mining colleges Bives w» the n«ult of an examination of aO resident students a. to their favour ro authors m poetry and prose. Of the 50 fail voters, 19 gave their preference to Tennyson, 12 to Shakespeare, three to Robert, Browning, throe to Longfellow two to 'Byion, and the same number to Mattlirw Arnold and Walter Scott, wmle ore vote wos cast for each of the following:—Chaucer Spenser. Hilton, Coleridge. Chrwina Ross-tti, Walt Whitman, nd Rudyard Kiplin"- taoag prose writers the highest 'immbcv of votes given to any one autnor was six to Mr Seton Mernman, .olloW by five for Charles Die-kens, four for lulna Lvall three each for Rslph Connor KudTard Kipling, Stanley Weyman, and Mar:e Coiclli. and two each for Geoge Eliot , \\ alter Scott. Charlotte Eroirce. Winston Churchill, anJ Marion Crewford — The announcex-nent of a novel by Mi Swinburne is the most mteresting^ item o f liteiary news. Its title k "Love s Cro^scvrrenrs " and, whilst ;t; t dcah with the uiv-Vbi-sal theme, it also satirises certafii mamfoitafons of »noiern society. Mr Wa\tsDunton, too, has a new mne'l on hand; but his book will not appear until later; Sir Swinburne's to have boon published or. July 12 Ly Me-srs Chatto and Windus. The fact that" Mr Swinburne should, so late in tlie day, have chosen this form of fiction in v liich to express himself reems to indicate that the no .-el is becoming more and more the vehicle for mo'ler.i thought. It will bo remembered that tins is not Mr J9i\inturne's first adventure in fiction. Sonta 30 years ao;o, m a short-lived periodical called the "Tatler," appeared "A Year's Letters," from Mr Swinburne's pcsi. The &tory was told m correspondence form, snd was preceded by an ironical prefatory letter to the author, beginning : "Dear Madam, - I have read your manuscript with due care and attention, and regret that I cannot b->it I pass upon it a verdict anything but favourI oble. A long sojourn, in France, it ap- ' pears to me, ha? vitiaLed your principles and confused your judgments.'' — T. P.'s We eld j'.

—It is in keeping with the shadows that oiio fin.& ia further aicmones qf the. Dova

a distinctly mournful tone in "Those Evening Bells." To ha\c listened at A.shbcurne to the very s>ani3 bells that Tom. Moore jmmor*-a!isfcl in h ; s melodious tribute to Ashbourr.o is an undying memory of the days of my youth : — Those evenirg balls! those evening bells! How many a tale their music tells, Of young and home and that sweet time When first I heard their soothing chime. There can be no sweeter domestic rnetiu-ft in the pa«es of biography than Stoore's description of his cottage home on tl © Dove ; and there is no more hurt-an sentiment in English poetry than the tender resignation expressed in the poet's farewell reminiscence of the adjacent village: And so 'twill ba when I am gone, That tuneful peal will still ring on, While othecbards shall walk these dells And sing your praise, sweet evening bells! Superfine critics wijl tell you that th\« is not poetry, that it is mere pietty rhyming. Edmund Kean, the greatest of English actors — who apoke the noblest poetry ever written with an intensity of feeling that enthralled audiences as o.ily one man since has enthralled them — loved "Those Evening Bells"' ; and in his latter days he often saft at the spinet and picked out the melody. of Besthovea's beautiful setting of the words while he ieci;sd tlie poem to himself. One evening his friend Lee, curiously anxious about him, looked into his room ; Kean was repeViflg' the last words of "Those Evening Bells," and at the conclusion burst into tears and flung- himself, sobbing, across the instrument; they were the last^lines of poetry Kean ever repoatod ; the next day he died. — Joseph Hatton, in "Cigarette Papeis." — "A Daughter of the Manse," by Miss Sarah Tytlcr, is about to bo added to Mr TJd win's Colonial Library. Miss SarahTytler has mads a delightful story otit of simple materials. In her new book, "A Daughter of the ilanse,"' she has taken as her foreground a slice .of Scotland in the early thirties, and she weaves round ths homely Scotch, folk of a small manse a romance as tender as it is true to lifs. Miss Tytler does not belong to the sensational school of fiction, and the plot with her is not the only thing. But she is an adept in the portrayal of the finer emotions, and her literary gifts are indisputable. Lovers of good fiction will be well advised to add this book to their list of novels which must not on any account be missed. — "Grand Relations,"' by J. S. Fletcher. Mr Fletcher has a pretty wit and a sound notion of comedy. He gives us a spirited story of farming life in Yorkshire, - where, it seems, the- lads and lasses are longheaded even in love. The book is marked throughout by buoyant good-nature', unaffected humour, witty dialogue, and genial yet. incisive oarioature, which makes us conscious that Mr Fletcher has not left unstudied "Vanity Fair" and "The School icr : Scandal."— The Outlook.