LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3031, 17 April 1912, Page 81

LITERARY NOTES.

short story was published and only 20 when my first novel appeared, Mr Phillip 3 O'ppenheim has been telling (says the Chronicle) his American publishers. " I have therefore," he adds, " had more than 20 years of story-writing, and the first thing which occurs to me to say about it is that I don't think there can be another profession in the world which maintains its hold upon its disciples to such an extraordinary extent." At 44 he sits down to commence a story with the same " thrill " that he had at 20.' A great sailor and administrator, the hero of tho famous voyage to the South. Seas and round the world, is commemorated in " The Life of Admiral Lord Anson, the Father of the British Navy," by Walter Vernon Anson, Captain R.N., published by John Murray. Not the navy only, but the great irusn who followed his example— Ilawko, Boscawrn, Howe, Saumarez, and others —might well regard Anson as their " father." Captain Anson observes of this biography that if he has not made it worthy of tho subject, and interesting to all who read it, it is because of the difficulty of following one who " seldom wrote or talked." But Anson, as he adds, knew how to inspire, if lie hatedi speeches, and his advice was sought by all. Every reader of George MacDonald's " Phantasies " is familiar with the verses — Alas! how easily things go wrong, A sigh too much or a kiss too long, "And there follows a mist and a weeping rain, And life is never the same again. Alas! how hardly things go right. Tis hard to watch through a summer night, For the sigh will come and thn kiss will stay, And the summer night is a winter day. Dr Grevilie MacDonald, of Harley street, London, the novelist's son, in a note to the Guardian, makes the statement that his father had always a particular objection to having his name put to this quotation in such a way as to suggest his responsibility for the sentiment; whereas the sentiment was actually that of a character in the ballad. A further addition to Napeolonic literature is noted. In " Tho Last Phase," Lord Rcsebery referred la a Polish admirer of the great man and his presence at Longwood during the captivity at St. Helena as " a fisrure of mystery," and something: tint still required " elucidation." Mr G. L. do St. M. Watson has sought to solve the mystery in a volume entitled " A Polish Exile with Napoleon" (Harper and Brothers, 12s 6d net). Tho Poliah exile whose relations with Napoleon are here set forth was Captain Piontkowskl who_ figures, by the way, not in M. Frederic Masson's "Autour de Sainte Helene." However well Piontkowski deserved the epithet " adventurer " which M Masson giv.s-s him. there can bo no doubt ho was a " J'ol *h follower" pf Napoleon. He followed him to Elba. On the return to France he seems to have been as r>ar to him as he could contrive to be, from the Hundred Days to the final exile at St. Helena. Mr Watson's book gives, among other material, Piont. fewski's correspondence with General Sir bert Wilson. Tho correspondence of Capel Lofft —an English admirer of the Em-

peror not less devoted than the "Polish follower" —has also been drawn upon. The author has been fortunate in using various documents in the French and Geneves© archives, and elsewhere, that have not hitherto been published. The Review of Reviews for April contains an article on the Gaekwar of Baroda, who is popularly si pposed to have slighted King George at the Durbar celebrations. This article puts quite a different aspect upon the matter. The survey is continued of the 20 greatest men the world has produced. The Book of the Month is " The Life of Cardinal Newman." The rest of the magazine is taken up with the usual excellent review of th e leading articles in the magazines of the world.

—Mr Putnam Weale, who has had an exciting career in China —having been through the Boxer rising and the siege of the Legation, and is the author, it is understood, of *a brilliant series of letters on those times—has just written a romance of European life under the title " The Revoh," which Messrs Methuen published on March 7, and which those who have read it describe as a very remarkable achievement in dramatic psychology. In his new book " The Matador of the Five Towns," which Messrs Methuen published on March 14, Mr Arnold Bennett has brought together a select number of short stories written by him during the last few years. While practically all of them deal with the inhabitants of " The Five Towns," the stories, vary widely in character. Some are uncompromisingly sad, but others axe of a purely humorous description. The mostimportant story i 3 that which gives its title to the book. In it are reintroduced some of the personages who appeared in the longest and best-known of Mr Bennett's short stories. " The Death of Simon Puge." Mr TJnwin is about to include in his Colonial Library a new novel, " Captain Guadring," by a brilliant Australian writer, William Hay. All who admired Mr Hay's " Herridgo of Reality Swamp" will be interested in this new book, which has its scenes set partly in England and partly in the Australia of early days. Its plot Is in essence concerned with the bitter feud of two brothers; it is the drama of two souls set in on atmosphere of high romance. Mr Hay's faculty for working out a deep psychological study in terms of romance — a faculty which is very uncommon —is displayed even more finely in his new book lhan it was in the former one. —Mr T. Fisher Unwin is issuing in his Colonial Library a remarkable " first novel" by E. M. Dell', entitled " The Way of an Eagle." It is an Anglo-Indian story, a love romance presenting a rather unusual psychological problem—a girl's repulsion from a man who saved her from a position of great peril in a captured fort on the Indian frontier. The beginnings of this repugnance and its gradual extinction are depicted by the author in an original way, and the b':ok is likely to attract readers not only by its Analysis of character and motive, but by its movement and action. It is a testimony to the quality of the story Hhat, before its publication in England, it was taken up for translation by various Continental publishers. The announcement that the Schiller Society has just acquired the humble cottag© near Leipsig where Schiller lived for a time has, in a sense, a political as well as a literary interest, at least for Englishmen. It was in tnis cottage that the Ode to Joy" (An die I'reude) was written, and there also that the poet was consoled by the young man who shared with him the dwelling. This friend of Schiller was at the time, 1785, working hard to establish a publishing business in Leipsig, and eventually became as famous in Germany as a publisher as Schiller was destined to be in the world of letters. The publisior, v. hoi© nam© was Goschen, in tim© took to himself a wife, and a eon of this union was the father of the late Lord Goschen, whom Lord Randolph Churchill forgot with such disastrous results to his future political career. Lord Goschen made more than on© pilgrimage to th© cottage associated with Schiller and was instrumental in inducing the authorities some years ago to identify by means of a tablet the historic house where, in all probability, his grandfather was the first to hear the poet recite his immortal son? of joy. Joaquin Miller, the poet of the Sierras, who is now well advanced in his seventieth year, unable to attend a meeting of the Short, Story Club of San Jose in honour of Dickens, wrote a letter of encouragement, some sentences of which will interest many readers:—"l should like to be with you. but cannot, so let mo preach to you," he wrote on February 3, " the serious gospel of incessant toil Let me insure you there is but one royal road to Dickens's place of letters; that is not the path of pleasure and giddy talk, but toil, incessant toil, ' the capacity for infinite pains.' His was a most dismal land, and he had a most dismal time and class to deal with, but he had the patience and capacity to persuade his race in the right path and reform tl e world while ho laughed at its folly. And what might Dickens have not done with our climate, our colour, our 365 days in th© year with flowers underfoot and fruit overhead, and such sunrises and sunsets as no man ever saw in any land but ours." '' To us much has been given," tho Californian 'hard conclude?, " thareiot© much is to be expected. Triumphs, great triumphs, do not grow on trees. You must dig and dig to tho bedrock to find gold in paying quantities. Wishing you all ' the capacity for infinite pains.' "