LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2818, 18 March 1908, Page 102

LITERARY NOTES.

—Mr Walter Smith, the editor of the American edition of the Strand Magazine, tuts been appointed general editor for Messrs Cassell and 1 Co. He joined the staff •f the New Tork Times after leaving Harvard, and came to London 12 years ago as Special correspondent of the Boston Transcript. Shortly afterwards, at the age of J7, he became one of Messrs Newness editors. —It is a notorious fact, overlooked by most Homeric critics, that poets or other »Ttists who, in 'an uncritical time, represent a past age known to them through tradition always c>othe their heroes in the costume i*rid armour and make them tibe institutions of their own epoch. They never dream of employing "local colour" gathered from archsßological research. — Andrew Lang, in Btaokwood's. — Francis Thompson was a little, quiet, bear-ded man, voluble when poetry wae under discussion. We used to say in the nineties — an age less arid for poetry than thi:-. is— that the immortals were sure of their succession in him and in W. B. Yeats. Ten years later he is gone, and W. B. feats stands alone, yet there is no younger poet who approaches to be of their company ; and Meredith and Swinburne are old 1 ; and Kipling seems to be old because it » so long since he established his greatness.—Pall Mall Gazette. — The appearance of a cheap edition of \he late Sir John Seeley's " Ecce Homo " ;>etokens, we imagine, the expiration at an early date of the copyright in the work. When it first appeared (says the Westminster Gazette) this book made a great noise in. the theological world, and was the subject of much criticism. Mr Gladstone, it will be remembered 1 , took an active part in the controversy, writing an elaborate review of the book for Good Words— a review which he subsequently included in his •' Gleanings of Past Years." —Mr James Fitzalan Hope, who was Conservative member for the Brightside Division of Sheffield from 1900 to 1906, Yob writen a volume that is an experiment in political literature. He calls it "The History of the 1900 Parliament," and sets forth in it jeenes and events of which he was himself »n eye-witness. As a serious account of a historic Parliament, presented ia a permament and readable farm, it ought to appeal to ardent politicians of all shades of opinion throughout the country, as well a* prove interesting to readers who hare no special political knowledge. —It Jnay «eem irreverent, but I confess I sometimes fall into a mood in which I prefer the essays of Mr Chesterton to the essays of Dr Johnson, and the <essays of Mr Max Beefbohm to the e:*says of Addison. The truth is that essays 6uffer a eeachange into something that is not very rich and' not very strange. They draw their life from a point of view, and time often turns ancient points of view to derision. I tiunk

that is why the essays of Lamb are more alive than the essays of Johnson, for Lamb's humour vitalises his literary grace. There is no salt in literature like the salt of humour. — James Douglas, in the Star. —No one reads poetry nowadays. One wonders whither have gone the peers of the young men of Oxford who used to read Morris and Rossetti and Swinburne, and even Philip Bourke fclarston and Arthur O'Shaughnessy, the young men whose romantic mood Tennyson caught and made immortal in "Maud." Where are now those girle of country parsonages and the homes of the professional classes -who used to know Mrs Browning off by heart? — 'the girls of the higher education who were advanced in reading " Rabbi ben Ezra " ? Gone, like the leaves of autumn. They are reading poetry in America and English poetry, since they have produced little of their 'own. There is nothing so shy and easily discouraged as poetry, and it will not come where it is not. wanted. — Pall Mall Gazette. — The residents of Sheffield have resolved to commemorate in a- fitting manner the life and work of James Montgomery, the poet. Montgomery was born at Irvine in 1771, but he 'spent the greater part of his life in Sheffield. "He made his way to London when a youth, carrying with him a collection of his poems, but failed to find a publisher. He was appointed clerk to the editor of the old Sheffield Register when 21 (in 1792), started the Iris two years later, and continued to edit it until 1825. His Radical- views (says the Westminster Gazette) involved fines and imprisonment for him on. two occasions in early days, but by 1832 he had become a moderate Conbervative, and he was in receipt of a Government pension at his death, on April 30, 1854. His collected poetical works were published in four volumes in 1849, but are not heard of much nowadays. — Scott is a Rreat painter of life, and mu6t be jud«ed with the other great painters of life — with Homer and Cervantes and Shakespeare. He is immensely interested in the human comedy, and sees it as played in all ages and by all classes and conditions of mankind. He has this trait in common with Shakespeare — that the width of his survey is very great, and that he has such abundant sympathy that there is no Lint of bias. Take any one of the best novels and look at the extent and | intricacy of the web of it, the variety of 1 characters, the many changes of scene, the adequate presentation of countless points of view. Take "Waverley," and note how the Quixotry of Jacobitism, the feudal doctrines of "the Highland chief and his followers, the sound sense of the Whig landlords, the fanaticism of the Cameronian remnant, the worldliness of laird and country lawyer, the April comedy of love as well as Jove's tragedy— how all are fairly and truly set forth in the drama. It is easy to work designs in snow and ink, where absolute virtue is set in relief against absolute vice. It is easy to seleot an episode and treat it adequately. But to work out a large design through many episodes with-

out losing perspective for a moment is possible only for the greatest. — Spectator. —Mr Bram Stoker is a. bai;rister, was for many years in the Irish civil service, and' then for about a quarter of a century manager to the late Sir Henry Ir\<ng. He has been literary, art, and .dramatic critic on several papers, and has written nine successful novels, the weird and powerful " Dracula " being the best and most famous of them. "May I be permitted, instead of praising any of the many good books published during the year," writes Mr Stoker, " to speak with horror and reprobation of several novels pub'ished during the same period. These works are filthy and base, and reflect credit on reither the authors r.or the publishers. The press that noticed their are to be condemned, and the parents who allow them into their houses and the libraries which further their circulation should be ashamed of themselves. If euoh works continue to be published we shall &ssure<Hv have a censorship of novels, to the g.-eat injury of freedom of thought, imagininon, and writing. Already some of us are trying to establish a society of writers who will undertake not to publish with firms who send out such books." — Tho 1-iondoa Reader.