LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2923, 23 March 1910, Page 82

LITERATURE.

BOOK NOTICE. " The Intruding Angel," by Charles Marriott. London : Hurst and Blackett. Dunedin: J. Braithwaite aaid Co. (3s 6d; 2s 6d.) Mr Charles Marriott's new book is one of great force and interest. The tale is based on that inexhaustible theme, compatibility in marriage. The subject is as wide as human nature itself, and admits of as many varieties of treatment. What makes the essential difference in heart relations between one man or woman and another? No one nan tell. The attraction is often mixed with repulsion almost amounting to hate on certain sides of the character; but the attraction is stronger than the repulsion, and the attraction generally wins. Mr Charles Marriott's hero, Richard Noy, describes this attraction as "It." The name is unfortunate, but the definition, or want of definition, is excellent:—" For his own. convenience be (Michael Nov) divided women roughly into those who had, and those who had not, ' It.' He could not explain what 'lt' was, though he knew very well what it meant. It was a quality not peculiar to women ; certain flowers, certain- music, certain pictures, had ' It,' while others had not." And these women, flowers, music and pictures always attracted him, as" they attract all of us, though it is not the same "It" which attracts each person. Richard's sister, Morwenna, thinks that "It" is synonymous with "mystery"; a chemist would be- content with calling it '' affinity." Richard - commits the. unpardonable sin of marrying a woman who does not possess " It," and, of course, he meets the right women afterwards. Pauline Roby is a bright, pretty girl, very conscious of her charms and very apt in the use of them; land she is the slave type of woman who requires a master rather than a comrade, who is bought with gifts, and kept in order by the whip. She does not kve Noy; neither does he love her. Yet each finds in the other something that is desirable—money, position, charm. Theirs is not a sordid marriage, but it wants the one thing which makes marriage more than a civil contract. Rose Ormiston, on the contrary, possesses the mysterious "It," and a* once Richard's soul is knit to ' hers, and communicates without spoken word. She is the lover-comrade woman to whom '' a man might turn with gay confidence in t!he tightest corner," who would " lie under a hedge with him or share his last stand in battle." At the first meeting they exchange glances, but not words, yet Richard, who "had been feeling " worried and irritable,''' became at once " suddenly and soberly cheerful. The woman's glance, grave and impersonal a; the day itself, was translated for him into i the words, ' Fear no more the heat o' the ' sun,' -but without the implication of death. i All through the day he found his mind I recalling passages to read into the glance, , unconscious and unintended, of a woman's eyes as they met his for ten seconds in 1 a slowing down of traffic. It was from Bishop Butler, of all people, that he got the nearest interpretation of the message: ' Things are what they are, and the consequences of them, will be what they will be: why, then, should we desire to be deceived?' . . . The word he wanted came at last—she was serene, yet strong.... anr 1 the words ' Fear no more ' had been conveyed In her grave impersonal glance." The attraction is mutual and acknowledged by both. Richard is married to a woman who is utterly uncongenial; Rose is also married, and is quietly attached to her husband, who is slowly dying and depends on her for everything. In one powerful scene they speak without disguise, heart to heart, expressing their mutual feeling and acknowledging the responsibility laid upon them towards others. Theirs "was something like an unexpected meeting with an old, forgotten creditor." Each acknowledges the claim quite simply, but does not ignore other claims and duties, and does not for a moment contemplate the neglect of self-chosen tasks. How they endure and finally overcome the diffievdties which surround them is the author's secret, and cannot be told in a.few words. Both Richard and Rose are fine and uncommon characters, and their inner history, as revealed by their biographer, is very well worth reading. The pathos of Pauline's small soul and narrow outlook on life, her essential selfishness and crude theology, are admirably contrasted with the magnanimity of the ether two, who feel for her what she is utterly incapable of feeling for herself, and try to save her suffering, which. —when it comes—is scarcely felt by her coarse nature. The scene of the story is laid in Cornwall, and Richard is a partner in the great tin smelting works of Noy, Dunston, and Co. The story opens with a most realistic account of these works and of the intelligent pride and interest taken by the young master in his work. " Dead matter was an unthinkable term to him; everything had ite genius to be coaxed or commanded to the service of man." He loved to get to the "allegorical," or inner, meanings of things, the original spiritual pattern of H hich material things are only a copy : the eternal "types" again and again reproduced in perishable flukttc forms : "Plunging his hand into a heap of the dark, heavy tin-oxide, as it came from the last washing, he explained that so far the process of purification had been mechanical—' the rough and tumble of life, bo to spfeak.' But for the final emancipation of tin from its airiest burden, oxygen, there was needed a more searching appeal—a- combination, of extreme 'heat with chemical action. ' You see,' he said, ' it's like breaking down a union between two human beings. You introduce a stronger affinity at a moment of high emotion. The object of this mixture ' —he pointed to a heap of mingled oxide, small coal and limestone which, was being quickly shovelled mto qua r>f the

reverberatory fornaces —' is to tempt the oxygen with a more attractive substance at the moment when its affinity for the tin is strained by heat. You, as it were, stir up a quarrel Between the lovers and introduce a formidable rival, carbon, which has a powerful affinity for oxygen; and the eloping elements fly up the chimney in the form, of carbonic oxide or carbonic acid gas.'" Richard's life and trials, his • observation, his study, and his intuition teach him three valuable axioms by which to rule his life, in ever expanding circles : first, the law of cause and effect—" You can't make omelettes without breaking eggs"; second, the humanitarian principle of altruism—" But you must remember the others " ; and finally, the higher spiritual concept of unit} and mutual interdependence—" The people who see and understand must pay for these who don't." It is a good philosophy and very well put. J LITERARY NOTES. —■ The latest translator of Dante is Mr A. L. Money, who has rendered "The Purgatorio" into English blank verse. The text has been followed stanza by stanza, and. as far as might be, line by line, wiif.i the double aim of trying to reproduce in the English tongue Dante's marvellous condensation of thought, and of giving, if possible, some faint echo of the music and the "lilt" of the original verse. We understand that Professor Warren Vernon, the distinguished authority on Dante literature, has seen the MS., and expresses a very high opinion of its literary quality. _ The translation will be published immediately by Messrs George Allen and Sens. Mr Cecil Aldin is engaged upon an elaborate illustrated edition of "Pickwick," which will be published during the present year. No attempt has yet been made to do full justice to the pictorial possibilities of Dickens's humorous masterpiece, and Mr Aldiri's pictures of sporting life and character suggest at once his fitness for the task. The edition, which will be in two volumes, is to be profusely illustrated with full-page pictures in colour, and will also contain a large quantity of black-and-white sketches in the text. A special Pickwick alphabet is also being designed by Mr Aldin to form the initial letters. The book is now in active preparation, and will bear the joint imprint of Messrs Chapman and Hall (Dickens's original publishers) and of Messrc Lawrence and Jellicoe. The death is announced of M. Edouard Rod. French literature will* claim him, but he belongs to Switzerland, having been born at Nyon, in the Canton de Vaud, and having been a professor at the Geneva University. Ho was once invited to present himself as a candidate for the Academy, and would almost certainly have been elected if he had done so; but he declined ~ to denationalise himself for the purpose. His best-known work was in fiction. He began as a follower of Zola, but afterwards drifted into othei* paths. He also, however, wrote excellent criticism for the Debats, and was the author of a treatise on the demeles of Rousseau with Geneva, at the time of the burning of "Emile." which is the accepted authority on the subject. Mrs Ada M. Ingpen has written a book on "Women as Letter-writers," containing specimens of over 60 writers, from Agnes Paston in 1451 to Christina Rossetti in 1882. A memorable letter is that by Quepn Elizabeth, addresed to the Bishop of Ely :—"Proud Prelate, —You know what ydu were before I made you what you are now. If you do not immediately comply with my request I will unfrock you, by G . —Elizabeth." Among the writers quoted are Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Hannah More, Fanny Burney, Maria Edgeworth, Margaret Fuller, Lady Hamilton, Kitty Clive. and Susan Ferrier, the novelist, who declare'?, that a certain canto in "Childe Harold" is "enough to make a woman fly into the arms of a tiger." Of all the displays of art, the essay is the most indefinable, the most subtle, because it has no scheme, no programme. It dees not set out to narrate or to Drove; it has no dramatic purpose, no imaginative theme; its essence is a sympathetic selfrevelation, lust as in talk a man may speak frankly of his own experiences and feelings, and yet avoid any e-upicion of oorotism, if his confidences are designed to illustrate the thoughts of others rather than to provide a contrast' and a selfglorification. The essayist gives rather than claims: he compares rather thanparades. " He is led by his interest in others to be interested in himself, and it is as a man rather than as an individual that he takes the stage. —A. C. Benson, in , the Cornhill. "The Man Who Stole the Earth" is the title of a new sensational novel by Mr W. Holt-White which is appearing in Unwin's Colonial Library. It is scarcely possible to open a newspaper in these days without coming across one or more references to airships. Mr Holt-White'a tale, therefore, of a man who dominated the whole world by means of a master airship should be eagerly read bv a large public. In "The Man Who Stole the Earth" Mr W. Holt-White conceives no mean idea. John Strong, the son of a baronet, falls in love with the Princess Diana of Balkania. As the King will not hear of the marriage, Strong decides to use a wonderful airship, the invention of his friend Langley, to steal the kingdom of Balkania, and set himself on the throne. Every nation rises against Strong, and he is forced to face Armageddon. But he does not flinch, because he is determined, when the last great world war has been fought, to lay the foundation stone of the millennium. Mr Holt-White draws some appalling pictures of what would happen if a determined man wove •really master of a perfect fighting airship. The writing is bold and ■'-'Torous, and the reader is rushed from c:.o scene of excitement to another. Of the three great writers woo open tho literature of the modern world, Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, it i« perhaps thpj last who has the greatest significance in the history of the culture of civilisation. Without the profound mysticism of Dante or the extraordinarv sweetness and perfection of Petrarch, he was more complete than either of them, full at once of laughter and humility and love —that humanism, which in him alone in his day was really a. part of life. For him the centre of tinners was not to be found in the next ——W- K "* in this. To the Divin© Comedy ;

he seems to oppose the Human Comedy, the "Decameron," in which he not only created for Italy a classic prose, but gave the world an ever-living book full of men and women, and the courtesy, generosity, and humanity of life, which was to be one of the greater literary influences in Europe, during some three hundred years.—Edward Hutton. Publishers, like othei people, sometimes make mistakes. Mr R. Cochrane, in the Book Monthly, recalls some famous examples. George Meredith, as pubreader to Chapman and Hall, gave an opinion emphatically against the acceptance of Mr 3 Henry Wood's "East Lynne." The less of this declinature has been estimated at £30,000 to this publishing firm, and of the connexion, presuming that they 'had issued her other novels, at £IOO,OOO. James Payne declined "John Inglesant," as reader for Smith, Elder, and Co., and it became a valuable literary property in the hands of Macmillan and Co. Edna Lyall's "We Two" was rejected by half ■a dozen publishers. A publisher's reader pronounced W. Clark Russell's "Wreck of the Grosvenor" a catalogue' of ship's furniture. It is the boast of Mr Hall Caine that no novel of his has been hawked from publishing house to publishing house. Mr G. R. Sims records that a short story of his, "A Pleasant Evening," was declined by the Family Herald, Chambers' Journal, and All the Year Round. Mr Rider Haggard's "Dawn" was declined by five or six publishers. When Norman MacLeod was editor of Good Words, he arranged with a popular novelist for a seriali which on reading h« found unsuitable. The publisher, Mr AlexanJer Strahan, agreed in this verdict, and paid the forfeit of £SOO, returning the MS. to its author, Anthony Troll Ope. Sir Arthur Conon Doyle, speaking at the New Vagabond Club, gave some advice to seekers after literary fame. What was difficult to explain, he said, was that there was something which was inborn, and not made; it was not by taking thought alone that a man could write even a humble land of story, and he had to disabuse the minds of the inquirers of the delusion that there was any back-door to literature, or that in some extraordinary way letters, to publishers could help the man who had not the root of the matter in him. Even for the simplest result the author rrtust have had some fairy godmother who had dioped him in the holy well of romance. ' Why, even a friend, who said, "I am going to give up literature, and write Sherlock Holmes stories" (laughter), subsequently admitted : 'I sat down to write them, but I could not get the beginning for the first." (Laughter and cheers.) People talked of schools of literature, and he often wondered what they made of the unpromising material they got to work upon. At his school they had a school of poetry, where every wretched youth had to write poetry, whether he had it in him or not.—(Laughter.) But suppose (continued Sir Arthur) the yctung aspirant had the instinct, what was the next stage? That was the time of struggle. What must a man do to try to win clear of the ruck? He must take his work seriously; granted that he had the inborn faculty, he must improve it at every turn. There were many things that went to m.ake a great writer. The first was style. No man had an inborn style; all was moulded on preceding style, and the first step was for the aspirant to impregnate himself with the style of the best writers, avoiding those who had r>eouliar styles. Borrow and Stevenson had helped many a lame dog over stiles.— (Laughter.) Then he must cultivate a vocabulary, for words wore • the bricks with which he built, and the man with a wonderful vocabulary was one who had taken trouble. It was almost a pity that there was not a society for the resuscitation of dying words and the resurrection of those which had passed away. An old Scottish minister, referring to the dancing of Queen Elizabeth when she was old. wrote, "She danced high and disposedly." That was one of the good words whicn should not be forgotten. Then among the weapons of the armoury of the young writer was omnivorous reading, and with it

J the taking of notes, for reading and forgetting what was read was a sinful waste of time. What he needed most was never-ending patience when he began, to play the game of ping-pong, with numerous editors on the other side of the table, and his manuscripts as the ball. Last of all, he must raise no obstacle to the publication of his writings, but at all costs get his name and his work out. Compared with other professions, concluded Sir Arthur, the writer was not tfell paid, but he would rather earn a hundred . pounds in literature than a thousand in any other profession.