LITERATURE.

Otago Witness, Issue 2929, 4 May 1910, Page 81

LITERATURE.

"The Churches and Modern Thought: An Inquiry into the Grounds of Unbelief and an Appeal for Candour." By Philip Vivian. London: Watts and Co. (Sixpence net.) _Thi6 is no slim tractate, as its price may suggest, but a compact volume of 432 pages of clear, open type. In its costlier editions this remarkable work has already received notice in these columns. The good opinion expressed anent it then has been echoed since by hundreds of journals and magazines in every quarter of the globe. No book dealing with the problems and relations of theology, science, and philosophy, as reflected in current thought, has ever had the living success of this one. One thing contribtiting towards this end consists in the fact that the book is brightly written. Philip Vivian has obviously been more interested in his subject than in his style, the result being that his diction suggests life, not labour. His earnestness also, which has impelled him to grasp the whole field of controversial matters, might have brought disaster on another man. With him it is an obvious cause of success. His book is not merely vivacious—it is eminently orderly, showing a place for everything and everything in its place. As a means of widening narrow views of man and the universe, "The Churches and Modern Thought" may be strongly recommended. As exceedingly well adapted for perusal by members of debating societies the same may be 6aid of.it. Its brief and pointed discussion of all past and present phases of religious thought, philosophic speculations, and scientific attainment renders it a really wonderful universal finger-post to all the varied outlooks of human mentality. --

" Romance at Random." By H. B. Marriott Watson. London : Hutchinson and Co. Dunedin : J. Braithwaite. (3s 6d, 2s 6d). Some years ago Mr Marriott Watson introduced his readers to a witty, impulsive, light-hearted young gentleman called Lord Francis Charmian, second son of the Marquis of Auriol. He was a charming companion, but somewhat rrresnonsible, delighting in adventures and seeking them on all occasions and under all circumstances. In the course of time Lord Francis succeeded, in his mother's rigfht, to the Barony of de Lys. and as Lord de Lys some of his further, adventures are related by Mr Marriott Watson under the title of "Romance at Random." The hero is of opinion that " there is romance everywhere if. you know where and how to look for it." Pointing to the house? on an ordinary suburban road, he cries •. " Here are so many respectable frontispieces. Open them anywhere and you wih be sure of some interesting reading—more or less. I do not promise you always sensations between the masonic coveTs; and certain of the romances would no doubt be dull. But on the whole they will be found to contain a considerable deal of excellent adventure. It's life, and life is such stuff as dreams are made of. You don't believe it, because you are too respectable. I, thank Heaven, have no reputation, and am free to believe -n---Ihing." If Lord de Lys had *"■ adventures they are not recorded

•work. From those here presented die reader dullness is most rigorously excluded. Comedy, often verging on farce, is the rule. The stories are tinged with occasional sentiment, and invariable good temper, aided by quick-witted resource and some brilliant epigrammatic conversation. These gifts first plunge the hero into the most unexpected adventures, and then—at 'the critical moment—extricate him with flying colours.! •

I" The Weight Carriers." By May Edginton. London : Georg-e Bell and Sons. I Dunedin : Whitcombe and Tombs. (3s 6d, 2s 6d). "The Weight Carriers" are those who carry the burdens of others, and Miss . May Edginton's story is chiefly an expo- \

sition of the tyranny of the weak over the strong; of the absolutely self-centred, self-absorbed egotist who can never see the rights and claims of others, but follows her own wishes, her own desires, to the exclusion of all else.' In the two Denises, mother and daughter, our author presents us with examples of "the daughters of the horse-leech." done into modern, fashionable English—women whose constant cry is " Give, give, give " —money, jewels, fine clothes, and —above all, —the hearts and the lives of men. It is a painful picture, all the more effective because it has its lights as well as its shadows, and the younger Denise has the redeeming point of mother-love, and finds for a little time, the " Kingdom of Heaven" onened to her by a child's hand. But the gate closes with a horrid jar and she is left outside with her ungoverned nature, her fieTy passions, her craving for excitement, and insatiable demand for the impossible, to drive one man to a slowly breaking heart and another to an honourable (suicide —if suicide can ever be honourable. Of the elder Denise, the details told in the story are not quite so tragic, chiefly because in her case "The Weight Carrier" is her own son, who early learns to make a stand against her selfish tyranny. As in many books of the period the picture here presented to us of modern society is anything but an attractive one : The empty, aimless life of sport and dissipation, of reckless gambling and cheating, of mean subterfuges to pay extravagant bills, of shameful debts and still more shameful payments, exhibits a state of things which urgently calls for some reform, and is doubtless to some extent accountable for the growing class antagonism to which it is impossible to close one's eyes.

" The Desert Dreamers." By Kathlyn Rhodes. London : Hutchinson and Co. Dunedin : J. BTait'hwaite. (3s 6d, 2s 6d). The three chief characters in this novel —Richard Allison, Emer Lisvane, and Diana Woods—are united by an unexpected bond. And their different stories, which are yet inextricably united, are worked out in widely diverse' spotsParis, the East Coast of England, and Benyeh, the ione, palm-guarded, desert village where Richard and Emer experience their short but beautiful love idyl. Later in the story it is at Benyeh that Richard expiates the wrong unwittingly done to his wife, Diana, and paves the way to their reconciliation and ultimate happiness. The story is original in plot and treatment. Both the women have pure and passionate natures, though Diana possesses also great self-control, which enables her to stand where a weaker woman would inevitably have fallen. That part of the story which deals with the desert as friend and foe, giving back to its " dreamers " just what they took to it, is extremely attractive. Though the atmosphere and illusion are not perhaps so perfect as those of Hichens's " Garden of Allah," it is probably as true to Nature, and the description of the dreaded khamsin, or hot desert wind, in its effect on the European temperament, " relaxing the moral- fibre while it stretches the taut nerves almost to the snapping point," is extraordinarily convincing- and realistic. Emer's 'tragic death is a scene of true pathos, and Richard's fight with cholera and subsequent experiences on the way to SidiOura will be read with breathless interest. The lofty moral tone of the whole story is a pleasant change from the neurotic raptures of many modern writers. The lesson of " sowing and reaping," as an essential paTt of life's discipline, is admirably taught, as well as the still deeper lesson which bids the would-be judge hold eternal silence.

LITERARY NOTES. —We hear much about new authors, new books, new ideas, but we cannot distinguish the few which are genuine and of value from those which are meretricious and worthless, until we have familiarised ourselves' with the acknowledged best —"the best that has been thought and written in the world." —Daily News. The "Reformation in Scotland. Causes, Characteristics, Consequences," by David Hay Fleming. LL.D., has been published by Messrs Hodder and Stousihton. Dr Fleming discusses with considerable fulness questions which have been either ignored or superficially dealt with in previous works on the subject. A new monthly register of biblio-" graphy, to be entitled " The Internaticp.il Bibliographer," is about to be published. It vs to be edited by Dr George Eller, and published by Mr Erskine M'Donald. The '»enture will take the f orm of a brief but

indispensable bibliography of all the prinnpal publications of Great Britain. France, Germany, Italy, and the Scandinavian connives. There will also be a literary survey «$* the publications of the month, and an editorial department for correspondence. All biographies, except Boswell's, are disappointing. Only Boswell knew what to say and what not to say. Others are obsessed with the unwholesome oraze for accuracy, and insist on every unnecessary detail. Nowadays, in fact, everyone thinks he is .capable of writing a biography. The novel-writing craze is bad enough, but th*» madness for biographies is worse. Until the reading room at the British Museum is closed to biography-mongers there will be no cure.—London Leader. —lt is an interesting circumstance in connection with Mr W. M. Roesetti's new volume, " Dante and His ' Convito': a

Study in Translations." that the first published work by Mr Rossetti, who is now well advanced in his eighty-first year, issued in 1865, was blank-verse translations of a , section of the "Diviha Commedia." Besides memoirs > of the several members of the distinguished family of which he is the sole survivor, >Mr Rossetti is the historian I of the Pre-Raphaelite movement. He edited | "The Germ" in 1850, and among editions of the poets for which he has- been responsible j none has features of value equal with hie "William Blake" in the Ald'ine Poets, pub- | lished in 1874. ! There has just been a celebration in

Franco of the centenary of Hegesippe Moreau. His work won posthumous recogniton; but in his lifetime he was the poorest and the least successful of the Romantics. Only once in his life did he receive payment for his verses, and that was in circumstances of which he was bitterly ashamed. The Prefect of Police, having been, assailed by satirists, invited Hegesippe Moreau to dinner, and offered him 300 fra.ncr to write a rhymed reply to his assailants. The poet accepted, for he was very hungry at the time; but he apologised to the men whom he, had been bribed to ridicule, and it was in the arms of one of them that he died at the early age of 27. —■ The science of Eugenics is the latest object of Mr G.. K. Chesterton's ridicule. Writng in the Illustrated London News he says:—"Someone defined metaphysics as looking in a dark room for a black hat that isn't there. This is unfair, for metaphysics is merely common sense. It is only metaphysics that tells a man not to look for a hat that isn't there. But (to judge b}' the Eugenists) the science of Sociology really does mean waiting in a wild place for something that won't happen. Eugenics is not merely a sham science; it is a dead science—a great deal more dead than astrology. To extract the superman by forced marriages is not merely a mad notion, but a dead notion —a great deal more dead than the notion of extracting evidence by red-hot pincers. One after another ail-men with active minds, from the old Greek philosophers to Mr Shaw and Mr Wells, have thought of the lotion, looked at the notion, and, in consequence, chucked the notion." —By way of a forecast of what might be expected if Indian sedition culminated in successful revolt, " Scoto-Indian " paints in Blackwood's Magazine a grim picture of India under a Bengali Government after the English have been got rid of. It is grim, yet with a strong element of .humour. The Council of the Confederated States of Hindustan meets in Calcutta to discuss the situation and the rumours that Sikh and Gurkha armies are threatening the capital. The Ministers concerned prove conclusively that there is no danger, but on the break-up of the council they make their way to the steamship office to take tickets for Europe. To repel the invasion from the direction of Nepal General Feetajee concentrates the flower of his army. He himself is a most diligent student of the art of war in books. When, however, the enemy arrives, neither the general nor his troops are there to face them. The silent and abandoned gains are all that remain. The general, by hiring a tug, is with difficulty able to overtake the Europe-bound steamer, and thus to report personally to the President and War Minister, who were both on board —Mr Maurice Baring, who has lived for many years in Russia as correspondent for a great English newspaper, has republished in book form some of his illuminating papers. According to Mr Baring Gogol is the only Russian author who has given us in literature the universal type of Russian —the Russian " man in the street." Tolstoy has depicted the upper classes. Dostoievsky has reached the innermost depths of the Russian soul in its extremest anguish and at its highest pitch. Tourgeniev has fixed on the canvas several striking portraits, which suffer -rom the defect either of being caricatures or of being too deeply dyed with the writer's pessimism and selfconsciousness. Gorky has painted in lurid colours one side of the common people. Andreev has given us the nightmares of the younger generation. Chekov has depicted the pessimism and the ineffectiveness of the " intelligenzia." But nobody except Gogol has given us the ordinary cheerful Russian man in the street, with his crying faults, his attractive good qualities, and his overflowing human nature —in fact, it is the work of Gogol that explains the attraction which the Russian character and- the Russian country exercise over people who have come beneath their influence.

A writer in La Revue gives some details as to the earnings of French novelists. Those who make a living out of their novels, we are told, are few. The average man thinks himself lucky if a novel brings him in, £2O. and often has to put up with a reward of £lO. Unhappily, moreover, it is precisely the writers (who aim high who are thus indifferently recompensed. Those who concoct sensational serials for the half-penny papers often do vastly better than the writers whopander to similar tastes in England. A writer in England, if verj sucessful, may malce about £2OOO a year, but he has to write about a million words in a year in order to do so. Emile Richebourg, who was for many years serialist-in-ordinary to the Petit Journal, earned for a long time about ten times that income; and Xavier de Montepin did not lag far behind him in prosperity. Both of them, at any rate, made far more money out. of their writings than did either Zola or Daudet. Yet how many novel-readers could offhand recall the name of a single work of either of them?

M. Thomas Braun is, lik© Maurice Maeterlinck, a poet of Belgian nationality. ! He has already produced a few small i volumes of- •verse, among which the "Livr© de Benedictions " is noteworthy. His last ' literary effort, however, deals with a novel and hitherto neglected subject, yet one singularly suggestive to> the imaginative mind. He sings, in light and tuneful verse, j of the postage stamp, the modern wingfooted messenger of thought and greeting • from home to home and from land to land 1 . I Like a well-arranged stamp-album, the poem j is in five parts, and all of us who have collected in our youth—and who of us has j not? —can follow and appreciate M. Brawl's flights of fancy over the "five quarters)'' ' of the globe. How *ull of historical and topographical suggestion are the portraits of the baby-King Alphonso or the girlish j curls of Pauvre petite Wi'Hielmime, Tulip© d'r pays des Cimbxes; the olive-hued stamp from the groves of Sicily or the wine-red issue, of Naples, the i. Japanese chrysanthemum, the aigretted j Shah, the,, Botticelli-like maiden of the "Virgin Islands, and a hundred others ! quoted by M. Braun. But, incidentally ' tasks the poet, how is it that none of the ! fair islands fanned by spicy zephyrs have ', yet produced a philatelical souvenii of j "Paul and Virginia"? An old lady, nearly 90 years of age,, i Mrs Mary Brotherton, who has just passed 1

away at Freshwatei, Isle of Wight, was a link" with the literary past. As a child (writes a correspondent of the Spectator) she used to stay at Ottery St. Mary at a house called Larkbear, where dwelt some old . Indian friends, and which was tne home of William Makepeace Thackeray, then coming and going to Cambridge. 01 Larkbear she has given a charming description in the biographical introduction to " Pendennis." When she married she went abroad with her husband, and for many years they lived in Rome, where they met the Brownings and the interesting society congregated there in the early ■'■fifties." Many of her essays and stories were written at this time, and all her life long she wrote poems full of real music and deep feeling. So>m© of her letter.: were very beautiful, and haunted one a: fine letters do. She published more than one volume. "Old Acquaintance" came out in 1874, and was deservedly successful, and "Rosemary for Remembrance" was published in, 1895; It is over 40 years 6ince Mr and Mrs Brotherton settled finally in the Isle of Wight. Among their friends were Thackeraj, the Brownings, G. F. Watts, R.A., Lady Ritchie, Mrs Cameron, Mr Frederick Tennyson, and Lord Tennyson. For the name of Tennyson her heart was full of devoted friendship.

The catalogue of rare arid valuablebooks and autographs just issued by Mr Bernard Quaritch is a publication to make the ordinary book-lover's mouth water. Not only is 't remarkable for the number and) variety of its items—the catalogue runs to 259 pages—'but it is notable likewise as inindicating the magnitude of Mr Quaritch's undertakings. Thus we ar© told that orders to the value ol £sol' and upwards are subject to a discount of 20 per centiFigures like these 311 with amazement tho ordinary Englishman, who is not given to expend money lavishly on his library. The late Mark Pattison, who possessed some 16,000 volumes, used to complain that men of his own university spent so' little on books, and certainly the amount devoted to thir particular item by the average man is surprisingly little. But there must be somewhere about a select body of customers to whom the treasures disclosed by Mr Quaritch's catalogue make a successful appeal. We wonder if many of them can claim the 20 per cei i. discount? The woes of. the literary man were under discussion at the annual meeting of the Royal Literary Fund, at which Sir Alfred Bateman presided over a gathering that included Mr Maurice Hewlett, Mr Edmund Gosse, Professor Ker, Mr M. H. Spielmann, and Mr Sidney Lee. Sir Alfred, after referring to the losses sustained By the institution in the djeaths of Mr Swinourne, Sir Theodore Martin, Earl Egerton of Tatto,n, and Sir Rowland Blennerhassett, deplored' the fact that the funds of the society were now so low, In view of the ever-increasing body of professional writers and the ever-decreasing rates of remuneration for literary work. Sir Alfred quoted the case of an author who was recently offered £ls for a novel, on the condition, that he should take his next nine novels to the same publisher. There are many cases where £5 has been offered and accepted, with the proviso that the publisher should be entitled to the refusal of three or more succeeding books. One cannot help thinking that many American millionaires and others might do far more good by endowing the Royal Literary Fund than by presenting free libraries to local corporations who do not want them. Sir Alfred Bateman declares that the fund does not receive one substantial legacy in the course of 10 years, and that at least two-third's of the £3OOO given away last year was not their money at all, but had been, given by those who had gone before them.