LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2882, 16 June 1909, Page 80

LITERARY NOTES.

♦ — Among the stories told of the late Dr Rigg is one which has reference to his principalship of the Westminster Training College for Teachers. Students for admis- j sion to the college had to enter on the application the books they had read, aikt ■ one youth of 18 years put down "Sartor j Rcsartua." "Did you understand 'Sartor Resartus'?" asked the doctor. "Yes, sir; perfectly," answered the candidate. ."Shake hands ; i am glad to meet one who at 18 has ac much wisdom and perception as 1 had at 42," was Dr Rigg's comment. — A lively correspondence is going on in the Bookseller as to the publication of seyenpenny copyright novels. Messrs Macmillan recently announced thai" they «tre xo enter the field, and the trade generally appear to be offering- considerable opposition. Afc a meeting of publishers of novels' held ir Stationers' Hall in November last it was resolved to take steps to stop the ' "sevenpenny" movement. A small com- ' mittee was apj^ointed to meet a committee of the Authors' Society, and the matter is <still under consideration by the latter body. Messrs MacmiHan state that they have been compelled to bring out "sevenpennies" 1 owing to the pressure brought to bear ' upon them by their authors. | — There have been several "Lives of Chatterton" written. Ono of the best J known, perhaps, is that by the iate Pro- j fessor Masson. Now one more has been added to the list in '"Thomas Chatterton, the Marvellous Boy: the Story of a Strange Life, 1752-1770," by Charles Edward Russell, published by Richards. Mr Russell'smaterials have been drawn chiefly from the : collection of books, documents, and letters referring- to Chatterton now preserved in the Bristol Museum ami Library. The work is the result of many years' inquiry, ' and contains a number of illustrations. i — The Rev. J. W. Hayes has written an interesting little book on "Tennyson and Scientific Theology" (Stock, 2s net). It is curious to note that a certain kind of i mental hypnosis well known in the East ■ was familiar to Tennyson: "Quite up frojn mv boyhood (Tennyson wrote in 1874), ; when I have often been alone this (trance) < has often corao to me through repeating my own name to mv&elf, silently, till, all at ' once, as it were, out of the intensity of the j consciousness of Individuality, the Indi- j viduality itself seemed to resolve and fade away into boundless Being, and this not • a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly ' beyond words."' — "A sign of decay in the French novel seems discernible in certain recent developments in literary Paris," says the Dial. "To encourage writers of fiction and to stimulate +heir best emWvaiu-s — and,

' possibly, for a less disinterested purposa ■ also— a literary periodical of that city has ifounded a "prize of 3000 francs to be awarded annually to the youmj author who shall have produced the best novel in the preceding 1 two years, the verdict to be rendered by a jury of Academicians." — The last article written 'by Mr Marion Crawford dealt with a curious circumstanca attending the great ruin of Messina. A fanatic had wandered about the streets for weeks before the disaster, crying: "Be warned. Take heed and repent, ye of Messina! This year shall not end "before your city is utterly destroyed." History (said Mr Crawford) is full' of such tales, and people are too ready to believe that they have always been invented after the fact. It would be safer to say {hat of many prophecies few are fulfilled, and that those . few are thrust upon our notice; but we j know too little of Nature t o scout the suggestion that great natural convulsions ] may be announced 1 beforehand by signs perceptible to a few hypersensitive organisations. ] —The fact that "The Faith of Hia j Fathers" came through Mr .Melrose's prize novel competition last year has encouraged • him to prepare a new competition, -with the same award of 250 guineas, but with , different judges. 'Realising that women ad- ~ mittedly form the bulk of novel readers, "Mr Melroee has secured three well-known' lady novelists— Mrs Flora Annie Steel, Mrs Henry de la Pasture, and Kiss Mary Cholmondeley—as adjudicators in the new competition. The only difference between this and the former competition will be that instead of being confined to first novelists, I the award will be given to the writer of the -, best story submitted, without regard to the author's previous record. Particulars may be obtained by sending a stamped envelope I i? *^S Literary Agency of London, 5 Henrietta street, Covent Garden, W.C. - I — It has fallen, to the lot of a London- ! firm of booksellers to find in an old country < manor in the North of England a unique j volume in. old Caxton- binding, containing I five works printed by Caiton at Weet- , minster. The book has been sent to ! Sotheby's for sale. Among 6000 volumes of the English classics discovered wfiile examining the archives of an old library at Basel was a rare second edition of Shakespeare's works The volumes have been, transported to the public library. I — "Rudyard Kipling has a new book coming out in the United States, but, according to present arrangements, it - will not appear in England," says the Bookman. "It, will make a little volume, which . - will sell at 90 cents (about 3s 3d). Its title is 'With the Night Mail.' 'With the Night , Mail' recounts the experiences of the postal packet 162 — an airship — on her aerial run i from London to Quebec, her time for the | trip being something like 12 hours! The action takes place at about the year 2000 • a.d., ,and Mr , Sapling represents 162's engineer as complaining at his paltry 200 ; to 300 -miles an hour, and dreaming how I me ai — even on fc^ e equator— we 'shall-. t hold the sun. level in his full stride.' " I — Tfie melancholy news of Tilr Marior , Crawford's death at an age when the ; world might well expect much more of his accomplished works, lends a keei, interest (cays the Telegraph) to the announcement of his new novel. Its scene is laid in Rome, of which in fiction and in I severer prose Mr Crawford: wrote so many , books of distinction. It may, indeed, be i questioned whether the 'ong and famous history of the fortunes of the family of Saraeinesca is not 1 his highest achievement. ! For his plot Mr Crawford resorted to the j hospitality of the old Papal families to the secular Government. His heroine is Angela, the charming and beautiful daughter of the Prince Chiaramonte, an aristooratio old adherent of the clerical party, "more Papist than the Pope. n The Prince is killed in an accident, and it is discovered that, in his proud allegiance to the Church, ihe had refused to have his marriage legally ratified by a civil ceremony; consequently, his only child has no legal status as his heir. The situation is complicated by the girl's love for a penniless younar ! officer.- The title of the .book, whioh, it j may be noted, has already been dramatised, j is "The White Sister." Messrs Macmillan are the publishers. —M. Maeterlinck's new play, "The Blue Bird," is as fantastic as anything he has written. It has been translated by Mr. Alexander Texeira de Mattos, whose version is -pronounced by The Times to be admirable, though no child could possibly* ' make anything of it. The last lines "of he first act almost suggest that the writer had seen "Peter Pan " An abstraot of the story,if it can bo called a story, is given by The - Times, from which the play will scarcely be. considered attractive, or, indeed, in-- , telligible, by "most readers. It is ac follows: — "An old fairy, very like an elderly neighbour, enters the bedroom of two poor children, and sends them on the quest of the blue bird for which her sick child is crying With them go a dog, a cafe, the spirits of BreaxJ an 4 Sugar, an-d Light, who loads the party. The children first visit their dead 1 grandparents, and find them happier, J but exactly as in "fife, even to the power of I administering slaps; and here they secure a blue bird, which, however, turns blaolc before it can be handed over to the fairy. They then visit the Palace of Night, who- • hates man because he has discovered so many of her secrets, and here they search' in vain among ghosts, Diseases, Terrors, and Stars for the blue bird ; but find at last myriads of what look Jike them in a mysterious apartment that is not named. These birds, however, lose their colour and die all too soon. They then visit a forest and converse with the trees and the animals, who, incensed by the treacherous eloquence of the cat. attack the boy as their hereditary enemy, and would overcome him but for the dog. The blue bird is not there. Next they visit a graveyard, and summon, forth the dead, and the blue bird is not there. They then visit the Kingdom of the Future, where babies are waiting to be born, and the blue bird' is not there. And, finally, they find themselves again in their cottage, and, awakeniner from their dream, are visited by an okl neighbour, who resembled the fairy, with the news of the illness of h«r child. -Tb«little girl at once offers lier dove, which. they notice is bluer than it -was, and the gift makos the child well and the giver happy." All the persons and things are symbolical, the blue bird befng described by the oak as the "great secret of things and of happiness."

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