Our Latest Critic.

Observer, Volume XV, Issue 822, 29 September 1894, Page 2

Our Latest Critic.

Our latest ' distinguished visitor ' (vide the Home papers), Max O'JRell to wit, has at last produced his long- promised book on Australia. I have not yet perused this literary treasure, for the sufficient reason that it has not yet reached the colonies. But judging by the extracts in the colonial papers, I should say it is about as reliable as Max's other books, and that is not saying very much. Max is certainly an amusing writer ; in fact, he is often amusing at the expense of veracity, and prepared, like a famous and most unscrupulous journalistic scribe, to sacrifice his best friend for the sake of a three-line par. This amiable failing of M. Blouet's has got him into hot water before now. In his volume of Scotch experiences ('Friend McDonald'), for instance, he relates in illustration of the extreme ' carefulness ' of the canny Scot, that in a house at which he was a guest for a few days paterfamilias always charged his son for his board-and-lodging. Every Monday morning, young Sandy found, according to Max O'Rell, a neatly-folded bill under his plate which he was expected to 'settle ' forthwith. One day he opened the bill in Max's presence, and after perusing it, indignantly observed to his paternal relative : ' Father, what does this mean ? You have billed me for ham and eggs yesterday for breakfast. I had the eggs but I certainly took none of the ham.' ' But it was there, my boy,' papa replied with a sly smile, and you might have had it if you had liked. It makes no difference to me. When I put ham and eggs on the table I expect to be paid for them.' And this .was

served up by the veracious Max, not as a. joke, but as a typical anecdote and as perfectly true ! . • • •

No wonder an avalanche of indignant letters descended upon the devoted head of the man who had been guilty of perpetrating such an unmitigated 'whopper.' 'Friend McDonald ' was ' hurt, and no wonder. During his recent lecturing tour through these colonies Max O'Rell was everywhere ' lionised.' We colonials paid our four or five shillings apiece to hear some very indifferent lectures, and sent him back Home with his pockets stuffed with pur gold and bank-notes. And how does he repay us? By ridicule and abuse.

'Great Britain acquired the colonies,' says Mr O'Rell Blouet in his new book, 'at the cost of a little blood but a good deal of whisky.' This is one of the smart thingß Max delights in. It is crisp, epigrammatic, and calculated to make Home readers smile. That it is a lie few Home readers will stop to consider. Colonial society, we are further assured in this same book, ' contains nothing original, and the people are content to copy all the shams, follies and impostures of British venality and adoration of the golden calf.' 'Ihere is more than a suspicion of truth underlying this. But M. Blouet could not possibly in the course of his hurried scamper through the colonies have gathered it from personal knowledge or observation. He must have learned it at second-hand (a la Froude), and that sort of thing is never satisfactory. It is worthy of note that our severest critics are the men who, as one colonial writer puts it, ' have looked at the colonies through a knot-hole in a piece of scantling' and who proceed on the strength of such observation to ' write up the colonies ' and pass judgment upon them as if they had been born and bred out here.