LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Volume 06, Issue 2899, 6 October 1909, Page 82

LITERATURE.

LITERARY NOTES. — The centenary ol John Stuart Blacltie comes shortly, ar.J in xh&t association Messrs Elackwood announce- a book. It is a volume of Blackie's. letters to his wife, with a few earlier ones to his parents, all selected and edited by his no phew, Dr Stodart Walker. The letters, which date from 1826 to 1895, contain reminiscences of most of the notables of last century. — The Supreme Court of New York recently decided on appeal an interest' ng point of law as regards the validity of a contract to buy immoral books. Tim court declined to apply tho law prohibiting the pale cf immoral literature to t'nft works of Voltair? on the p round *hrit "differ as men may as to the views of Voltaire on many oue«t"on-<, nor.c can deny i'io gioat influence of bifc v.ork in promoting justice and humanity and the reign of reason in publio affairs." The jixltre who delivered tJiib judgment romaiked that th« last occasion, so fai as he knew, when "Tho Philosophical Dictionary" was condemned by the judiciary wai in 1766. when a youth in whose possession a copy of the work was found was publicly b timed in the streets of Paris. — Tl.ere is always a surprise in store for readers of Heine in translation. With those who are ur.able to read him :n: n German the surprise will take the form of wondering why so much sentimentality, expreeeed in bard and halting speech, should eve* have aroused the fervent admiration of some of the foremost English critics of the nineteenth century, and why thp French have nevei ceased since Heine's death to be as keenly interested in him and all his work a* they are in their own brilliant, wayward poets. On the other hand, readers ■who can compare the translation with the original will reflect that the wag responsible for the term translator- traitor did not reckon with the Heine translator, who. co far from being a traitor, is as a rule s anxiously loyal that the charge of servility ratheT than of treachery might be biought against him. Or shall we call it heroic endeavour in what so far has beer a lost cause? — Westminster Gassette. — The oritic6 are very severe on HallCaine'e latest novel, "The White Prophet. wTiich the author himself in a lettei to h'.s American publishers saya he thins it "is the most arresting and dramatic thing I have done." Mr James Douglas, in the Star, says of Mr Caine's book:— "It is Drury lane in limp cloth. To read it is to experience the emotions produced by the 'autumn drama.' If possible, it is more autumnal than ever. I am not sure whether the White Prophet is Gordon or Ishmael, but it does not matter, for Ishmael might as well be a Manxman as an Egyptian. Lord Nuneham is a comic parody of Lord Cromex, its bad taste being rendered innocuous by its absTirdity. The machinery of the story is stupefying, for in ordei to get a sensational plot with a steady orackle of sensational scenes Mr Came laughs at probabilities. Nobody in the story is possible, and nobody acts as any human being could possibly act." I —In one of Mr Baring Gould's best novels, "John Herring," there are some chapters which deal with the myth of an early Jewish settlement in Cornwall. The Rev. Israel Flamarik, an earnest evangelical minister, points out that the question, is settled by the Cornish place-names, such as Perranzabuloe and Mexazion, the one referring to the tribe of Zabulon and the other meaning "the bitter waters of Zion." Perranzabuloe in reality means the church of St. Piran in the sand — "in sabulo"; and we Had always understood that Marazion \ras a Cornish plural — "the markets.-" Bat a daily paper told its readers recently that the word was pure Hebrew, and that the village of Marazion was at one time inhabited* by Jews. —Am far as my observation goes (writes

' "C. K. S." in the Sphere) In Scotland only of the three Kingdoms is tfcere any very genuine reverence fco-d*y for literature and for literary men. You have some kind of feeling' in wandering through Edinburgh th*t it« best-known roen of letters are pot ' without honour. How can you obtain that 1 " feeling in London when we s&aroli in vain, for a statue of Milton ox of Johnson, of ■ Bacon or of Gibbon, and find only a tewe'ry caricature of Shakespeare? I was impressed , with our position in this matter during my ] hurried visit to Paris test week by observ- ', ing onto again the rich collection of statues oi ail thft famous men of Fr«?jice anid of the world, not excluding the great Geneves3, Rousseau, and the great Englishman, ' Shakespeare. I found those statues were ! still in-creasing-, one- to Alfred de Muasct having just been unveiled. Why, there is scarcely a distinguished Frenchman, German, Austrian, or Italian man of letters who has no.t been honoured in thie way in his own land. It is difficult to find a distinguished Englisbjnan who has bscn co racognisec'. Love of art in France- poo^s far beyond th's, for year by year new adds- ' tions a«e mad' 3to the statues in the TuiUvies Gardens, these auditions being purchased by the Government at the annual exhibitions. , — Depersonalised, pessimistic to the very i edsje of mania, materialistic, the art f i naturalism in Action established its tradi- ': tion in the hands of Dau<l°t. the Gon1 courts, and Emile Zola, dwelling not sel1 dom upon titie-noes calculated in themselves , 1 to recel, illuminatinig. too, with unques- ! tionaEJe conviction and sincerity certain j ' conditions of civilisation to which a com- i placent egoism '-would willingly shut its j ] eyes. They ar-o not. avowedly, the cham- [ 1 pi-ons oi tl»» ds^ises wli-o&a miseries on^J ■ sins afford subject matteT fcr their art. They are not moralists — t^achei's of morals ', — Tiub the facts they explore are. There ie much to plead for and muoli to urge . against the lifcerarv exposure of he sores i and wounds, the evils physical and moral of I- fnankind. Critics with l-rswfc right to pro- ". test are eloquent in asserting that, to uco ■ Bossnet's cigoroU'S imaire — "il ny a qua ■Dicu gui fas«e d<> !a In mi* 1 re pour les ; aveugles. avee la bovt^ et dn oraohat." ! Dothers have written — with a belief that ' truth is always remedial — the ar<o!os : a of a j school which produced "Jpck," "Germini-* I Laceirteux," and "Germinal." and irga'd, . j in M. Fagvet's sentence, boxh Flaub^vt and j his successors zs "qu-elqw chose coinme la j conscience ohagrine de l'humamte." — Edai1 burgh Review. — That there are certain words \?hirh are more than words 16 a pomi" well marl? by i a reviewer of The Times ;n; n nct:c'nar tho latest instalments of Dr Murray's "Xe.v Oxfcxl Dictionary" :—'" A word t'">at has livsd for centuries, vivu' per err virrm, ' always refiectinar changes in tlie nation, the family, ard the individual, becomes laden with a significance which no definition can exhaust. Lifce the warersorite of German legand it sometimes develops, as it were, a spiritual e-sssnoe- or &oul, as in- | tangible as the personality of a human 1 being. Such a word is the English 'hom^.' ■, To capture th-p essence of what the An'|ioj Saxons mean by 'homo* np«ds not only a pihilologist, but a sociologist and a po^t; but the result xnikl nere>. be definitive, because the conception varies in a thousand •ways, according to country, fatnil. , or individual. 'Emotional connocation' is. in- | deed, a phrase known to ih? kxicograpnei . , A woiid gets a. certain quality or temp«?" which stirs faint echoes and dim lights in the mind; but spcoch or reading is so rapid that ths* Sash of colour hardly reaches the consciousness befovfl it :s: s mcrgod in | what follows— like a figure oi a tint m a kaleidoscope. The usi of *uch words in such an order, rhythm, and rrefcre is to mak* the most swif* api>eal is the art of poetry. Again and again, as we turn ' tho pag-cs of these three new sections t.t the 'Oxford Dictionary,' we light on a wo:d which has served some poet for a magic no other word, just, there, could have given him:— 'My ryrossnec. lik« a robo i>ontifical. Ne'er seen but wondered at' : 'Ilidi pctcn- , tates and dames of royal birth.' 'This is the ■ forest primeval.' 'The only ri ? ht€o-J5 in » j world perverse,' 'My pretti^sr Perdita^ j Tennyson's 'The littlo rift within the lute, ! or Bailey's- sonorous Trob-* tlio proround . of thine own nature, man !' " | — Mrs Flora Annie Steel w. as Mr Bal- j four once said, the only Englishwoman who knows anything about the roa! India. Xor | is this at all surprising when it is remom- . ber«\ that th<> fir^ 30 years of her life were spont there, 25 of thorn as in-.pectro,? of Go\<H-nmr-nt bdiools in the Punjab. Mrs Steel became an anther in a rather pecuhar way. She took t-o writing tir-t to hf>lp a vo^ry hard-woiiked editor of an Tn<li?n n"«s- j paper during the very ik-arlly hot weathfr, when he was constantly c^osui ;vith re\c:i\ i At that timt> she wa^ only 27. but it fiequcntly hanpened tliat a v. hcla i-.iii^— leac'o^s and all— came from her rvn. It may not bo generally known that her first ( success was not in the reaTnis of fiti.^n. j but a domestic piece of woik called "The | Complota Cook and Hou^c-kceper," wlu-h | in India lias become p s:a.nJaid tioati I^. j By no means a quick worker in the ovdi- | nary sense, Mrs Stc-el has a passion for | accuracy. She studies her plots for months, ' sometimes years, ard is most particular when writiug not to maike any era.su.r-ct- or ! corrections. "On th-e- Fare of the Waters," for inutanee, was thought over for years before Mrs Steel panned a word of it. To get local colour she lived alone for wcciks in the Mussulman quarter of a small Punjab town. She had no servant, and did all he-r own woTk ; sleeping at night, as is the custom, on the roof in the starlight. Then she went to Delhi. There, again, sho studied every incident of the story, taking photographs of every place, and thus getting the colouring of the book as strong as possible. After her return to England she spent nine months in tba India Office studying all the papers and. manu- , scripts ir connection with the Indian Mutiny. i — A review appears ;n; n The Times of the "Manuscript Memoirs of Madame de , Chateaubriand," which have been published in Paris in their entirety. The lover of scandal will not find anything to his taste. "There is nothing- here about Pauline de Beaumont — though it was Pauline whe, on her death-bed, entreated Chateaubriand to resume connubial relations with the wife whom he had deserted for her Bake; no- i trfln# about Delphine d« Oustine — tfioogh Delpbine took a house opposite to Madame ' de Chateaubriand in order to make love to her husband under her very eyes; nothing ■ about Natalie de Noailles-Mouchy— though , Nkt*Ji* zDonooolbed Cb»te*ubriand's t ,

thoughts when he travelled with £«r in Spam to eucn an extent that ass wii<e was Wt for 11 months -without a lettea- from him. Nor is there anything about _ the iii j soar io us XLadumu de C , to whom Oaateauoriand, when foreign. Minister or Franca, wrote love-letters, and even poetry, en .Foreign Ottic© nose-paper; or abouj ±aortens« Allart de Meritons, for wbeso tavours Chateaubriarxl, at tho rip© age oi bo, competed with that rising young inpiomat, Sir Henry iJulwer, ana CnaiviS £»abbage, the .inventor of the calculating mawme. i.yen Madame Kecaniier is le.ro unment:oned." The wife of the famous writer, says the re-viewer, "was a sfcarptaaiperoa, practical little bedy, in wheso presence it was idle to pose; the partner or -nor hustsamd's ambitions, but not of ms ideas, on which e-is was always <jispoee<l to throw rxhcu.c and cold wate--. ' An particular, sao cou-d riot understand a great man — especially if ot gentle, birth — scooping to suc-i a, mean occupation as the wraWivg or books. Jrier ■middle-class pride,' a» Madame de iSoigne has put it, '>vas-\s-oua^.\xl by tje literary reputation of M. de Unatsaubnand, winch she cons.tsered derogatory.' &ne often admitted, in his presence, that ene nad never read a line of h:s writings ; and 6.ie telis in these memoirs, witn evident malice and deligftt, the story of a lady who conikred io iier that, having m-ec At. de Cfttatcauuriand :rr society, s;ie felt it incumbent on her ro v-aad ms 'Genie dv Christianisme,* saying, 'and I am quite sure, my dear, that it ie going to bore me to extinction.' "