LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2761, 13 February 1907, Page 87

LITERARY NOTES.

— Some unpublished letters of Garri.dc, edited by Professor George P. Baker, will appear in two instalments in early numbers of the Atlantic Monthly.

— A piece of blundering, bad work done at the beginning of a career is by no means decisive as to the want of merit in a writer. Experience has shown that out of a perfect pea of Lad work inspiration may come at last.^- Academy. — Mrs Wharton, whose latest story, "The House of Mirth." attracted so much attention, has finished a new one. It is called 'The Fruit of the Tree," and it will appear serially in Scribner's. Its subject is contemporary American life. — A tombstone of polished granite ha 3 just been erected by Ibsen's family over his grave in Christiania. A miner's hammer is carved on it, while a big slab in front of th«j stone covers the grave itself, inscribed with Ib?en's name only. —Mr Putnam Weak, who has ti a veiled extensively in Manchuria since the war, does not consider the grim drama by any means finished. In a new book on the relating of Russia and Japan, to be issued us a" sequel to jiis 'Reshaping of the Far East,' he has indicated his opinion sufficicntlv in the title. He calls it "Tlio Tiuce 111 the East, and the Afteiinath," and argues that the Manchuiian question is just as acute an a new and more eubtle form as it has ever been. "" — At Sotheby's rooms, London. 10 <.f William Blake's illustrations to Milton s "Paradise Lost were sold for £2CCO An ancient French illu'n.nated manuscript of the fourteenth century on vellum brought £1290 Fi\e early Shakespeare quartos, which were sol -I in" 189* for £<V4T, u-ouii'J enthuciastic in+erest, and a total sum of £1090 was ieali«ed for them— a profit cf over 140 per cent A collection of Keats's relics, including the poet's will, brought £510, and a series of Swift manuscript went for £510. — The fiftieth -anniversary of the founding of the Frankfurter Zeitung, first known as the Frankfurter Handelszeitung, has been marked by the publication of, n. volume of 1000 pages. The Prussians have never been friendly towards this paper, which, in 1865, they drove to Stuttgart fa~ thrae months. For the Imperial autnorities this Liberal journal has too often been a thorn in the flet>h. They cannot ignore it, for it is the ablest financial newspaper iv Germany ; and is to be found in cveiy cafe in Vienna and every club in London, besides having subscribers in «>very German hamlet. Not e\en Bi-marck could purchase it or shape it« policy. —Mr Charles E. S. Chambers, head <-f the 'anit.us Edinbmgh fiim of publishers, W. and R. Chamber?, who on Saturday. December 15. opener! an additional -a ing to the Chambers 's Institute at Peebles and leccived the freedom of the burgh, is a 31-andfon of Robert Chamber*, one of tne founders of the house. Mr C. E. S. Chambers edits the Journal, c-tabl^hed 74 year* ago ; he has edited "Letteis of Chailes Kirkpatnck Sharpe to Robert Chambers "' and " Poems of Robert Chamber." and he compiled a "Bibliography of the Woiks of John Leech." It i-. v orth recalling that William and Robert Chambers were made free buigefses of Peebles, their native town, in 1841, and that William Clxa-mbere in 1859 gifted to Peebles a library of 10,000 volume?, a reading room, and a lecture hall. — Criticising Sir Leslie Stephen in the Fortnightly, Francis Gribble says that Kis preat difficulty was fo express himself en- j thticiastically even when — what was rare — he felt enthusiastic. In the ca^e of Wordsworth he almost succeeded ; but in the case of Kingsley he failed. 'I thought,"' we read in one of his letters, "I had written a»i appreciatire article about Kingsley, and A. B. sail to me that he had been looking at it. and was glad to see that I had spoken of him so much more moderately thun all ihe >,tlu.r reviews." Similarly with the monograph on George Eliot, which pnn:;ited Mr Herbert Paul to the ] remark 'hat Mr Leslie Stephen "a-lwajs ,

seemed to have at the back of his brain a feeling that books ought not to be wr'tten at all, but that, as they were, we must not make too jniich of them, and yet must try to say what we can for them." — Members of Parliament from Canada are not now so rare as was the case nearly 50 years ago, when a writer of books, the author of "Sam Slick," came from Nova Scotia to enter Parliament as member of Launcrston in the Conservative interest. "Sam Slick" enjoyed great popularity at both sides of the Atlantic in its time, but the name of its author, Thomas Chandler Halibnrton, is not familiar to the present generation. Haliburton was -a native of Xov.i Scotia, of whose Court of Dommon Pleas he became the Chief Justice in 1828. He remained on the bench until 1656, and it was while he was a judge that he wrote "Sam Slick." "Sam Slick" was supposed to be a clockmaker, and in this character Haliburton told in humorous language some very serious things to his countrymen. It was the firrt book to appear in the American dialect, and so good an authority as Artemus W.->.rd regarded its author as the founder of American humour. "Sam Slick" came to London in 1842, with the result that a humorous description of English society, running into four volumes, was published. — I can remember that when I visited London at the age of 16 the first thing I did after housing my luggage was to make a pilgrimage to Macaulay's grave where he lies at Westminster Abbey, just under the shadow of Addison, and amid the dust of the poets whom he had loved so well. It was the one great object of interest which London held to me. And so it might well be, when I think of all I owe him. It is not merely the knowledge and the stimulation of fresh interests, but it is the -charming gentlemanly tone, the broad, liberal oufook. the absence of bigo"try and prejudice. My judgment now confirms all that I felt for him then. I don't know why talking of him always makes me think of Scott, whose books, <n a faded, olive-backed line, have a shelf, you see, of their own. Perhaps it is that they both had so great an influence, and woke such admiration in me. Or perhaps it is the real similarity in the minds and characters of the two men. You don't see it, you say? Well, just think of Scott's "Border Ballads," and then of Maeaulay's "Lays." The machines must be alike when the products are so similar. Each was the only man who could possibly have written the poems of the other. What swing and dash in both of them ! What a love of aU that is manly and noble and martial ! So simple, and _yet 6o strong. — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in Cassell's Magazine. — Can literature be taught? The question is dealt, with suggestively by Mr F. W. Cowkill, of Reno, Nevada, in the Nation (New York). It seems clear to Mr Cowg - ill that if literature can be studied it can be taught ; and also that if it J3 worth studying it is worth teaching. Is it, however, worth studying in college? Recalling the work he did in this subject at Harvard under Professor Child. Mr Cowgill is convinced that nothing in the collepre curriculum is better worth studying. "Failure to get good returns results most often from directing the student' 3 attention to the least important phases of the subject. Hisfory and criticism are all well enough, but tbey are not the main thing to be studied. If literature embodies the knowledge and wisdom of the human raoe — it it is, as Matthew Arnold called it, 'a critickm of life '—then surely the thought expressed in literature should be the main object of study. The important thing in studying an author is to find out, not when, where, why, or even how he wrote but what he wrote. What is his thought? What message has he for mankind? This, as every student of literature knows, is ro easy task. The teacher who directs such study will need a wide and exact knowledge of hmguasjo and histor}', grammar and philology m their broadest sense. And the student of any real'y great author will fiTd a task worthy of his bc-t strength and effort. But finding live moaning ii not the whole of the student's ta<-k. This meaning must be '-weighed and con6idercd "— to?t<d by the views of othr>r write: s and by the student's own experiences until li^ truth or falsity is established — :it lea^t to the student's satisfaction In this way, the thoughts *>xpie»scd in lnerattiie l>eco'ne the student's own, and ovory truth ace<*jrt«-d becomes a standard by winch to try 11.-c conduct of hfo. Thus character 11 developed, and the true end of all liberal .sTudy is attained. By thi6 method of study, too, youug persons learn to appreciate and love gocd literature."

— The hil^t sections of Dr Murray's new Oxford Dictionary afford some curious glimpses of mediaeval physiology, a^ The Tim** poiuts out. Among Ihe constituents of the human body, so thought the men of old, were four liquids or humours — blood, bile, phlegm, and melancholy (black bile). Their mixture formed a man's "temperament" or "complexion'" ; and if wrongly balanced they resulted in "distemper." If one of them was more prevalent rhan another, then a man was either .sanguine, or bilious, or phlegmatic- (this Dr Murray traces back to the fourteenth century), or melancholy. The laticr &3& 3 an adjective Mr Bradley does not find ear'ier than 1526, though the substantive is much earlier. But whh the Elizabethans it had parted from its learned quality, and melancholy had become already a favourite pose among persons of culture. — '"the crest of Gourtiers' arm«," Lyly calls it. Jaques was a glutton of melancholy, and the Spirit in Com us began,

Wrapt in a p'easing fit of melancholy.

To meditate my rural mmfctrelsy. Another point which this great dictionary brings out is that, the familiarity of the medise\al mind with St. Peter has left its mark upon the English language in words •<> diverse as Parrot, Samphire, Perkins. Petrel is another — perhaps "with an allusion to St. Peter's walking on the lake, though, as the earliest form found (1676* is "pitteral,"' this may be only popular etymology. Pierrot (continues The Times) doe 9 not get his name, as some flippant etymologist has suggested, because he talks xot on the pier — though the derivation is not much worse than some of Plato's — but indirectly from St. Peter, Pierre, a common peasant's name, becoming a typical item in the cast of French pantomime. Investigation into the origin of words "on historic principles" has led Dr Murray's collaborators to trace certain words "firmly established in the language to forgotten tradesmen, who plied their calling in London centuries ego. " Pinchbeck" js one. The reputation of Mr Christopher Pinchbeck, a toymaker of Fleet • street, who died in 1732, has suffered sadly

with the lapse of time. Another obscur< shopkeeper has helped to name the mcsl* famous street in London. Piccadilly, at anyrate, derives from Piccadilly Hall, which stood at the beginning of the seventeenth century in the parish of St. Martin's ;n; n the Fields, and 15 supposed to have been so called from the business of ono Higgiii'S, a taiJqr, who built it and made his fortune out of Piccadills, or pieces of cut work inserted in a collar or ruff. A. much more real character than either Pinchbeck or Higgius survives in the work Pickwickian.