BOOKS and AUTHORS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVI, Issue XII, 21 March 1896, Page 320

BOOKS and AUTHORS.

A LITERARY CAUSERIB for COLONIAL BOOKBUYERS AMD BORROWERS. fOO<S thug (*) hare arrived in t#e colony, and could at the •me of writing be Da'Chned n the pnn pa colonial book shops, end borrowed at the libra r es for the convenience of country cousins who fine d ffcutty in proeu' ng the latest boihs ana new ~d -t ons, the ‘ BGGhM AH trill send to gnu Hew Zeasnd ada r ess a-y bona uhich can oe obtained. Ao notice will. o f course, be taken of requests unaccompaned by remittance to cover postage as well as pubi shea price of booh It id requested that on y those uho find it impossible to procure boohs through the ora nary charnels should take advartage of this offer The labour involved will b* neaoy and entirely ur remunerative, no *ees or commission being taken. Queries and Correspondence on Literary blatters Incited AH Com muni cations and Commissions must be addressed THE BOOKMAX,’ Graphic Office, Auckland. „ „ There is no need to introduce Mr RudSome Modern yard Kipling in any part of Her Majesty’s Novelists. dominions or in any land where the English language is spoken. He is known the wide world over by his daring verse and no less daring stories which lifted him almost in a day into the front rank of our most original literary men. Though only just over

thirty years of age. he has contributed to our literature a great deal of work that has the true ring of genius in it. He has been a distinctly new force among versifiers and novelists, and his vigorous style has been copied by hundreds of literary aspirants, who, unfortunately, not

having the mental vigour and originality of which Kipling's style is the natural outcome, lapse into feeble forcibleness, unmusical numbers, and vulgarity. Kipling was born in Bombay, and it was as a depicter of

Anglo-Indian life that he first won fame. He is also the soldier's poet par excellence. Tommy Atkins never had a real bard who could see things as he saw them. and tell them as he would tell them till Kipling came on the scene. The children too owe a deep debt of thanks to the author of ‘ The Light that Failed,’ for in his last works, ‘The Jungle Books,’ he has opened np a new enchanted land where not only they, but their elders too, may delight themselves for many an hour with the conversations of the crocodile, the hyena, and the other denizens of the Indian forest.

Dr. Conon Doyle is the creator of that paragon of detectives. ‘Mr Sherlock Holmes,' whose disappearance we deplore when we finish each of his wonderful adventures. Dr. Doyle was intended by nature for a storyteller, and although for some years he administered boluses and wielded a scalpel, at last nature had her way and the physician laid aside medicine for literature. No one will regret that he did so, and without detracting from his reputation as a doctor, one may say that he is certain to have done more good to his fel’owmen by his pen than he could ever have hoped to do with his black draughts and pills. The novelist is a grandson of John Doyle, the famous political caricaturist ' H.8..’ and is a Scotchman by birth. He is now in his 36th year, and has a very high standing among the storytellers of the day.

Another author who mistook his vocation in early life is Mr Stanley Weyman. Born in 1555, he followed the law till ISS9, when his first novel, ‘The House of the Wolf,’ appeared, and led to his abandonment of the wig and gown. As a historical novelist Mr Weyman holds a very high place, and among the writers of the present day who have been successful in truthful presentation of events in history he easily

bears away the palm. ‘ The House of the Wolf,’ which we have reviewed in these columns, won recognition as soon almost as it appeared, but the star of the novelist datesits rise from the publication of ‘A Gentleman of France,’ a book which has been translated into German, French, and Swedish, and commands a large sale on the Continent and America as well as in England. Mr Weyman is a bachelor. In his latest work Mr Marion Crawford is again in Italy where has been laid the scene of all his most striking novels Casa Braccio has won high commendation from the English critics who with few exceptions place the book in advance of this author's previous best. Possibly they are right. The novel is persistently gloomy, yet never have certain types of the Italian character been so realistically portrayed. The groundwork of the book, including all the minor characters, and the style in which the theme is treated are wholly admirable, and it is only when the reader begins to consider the actions of the leading figures that there arises anything at which he feels disposed to cavil. Casa Braccio is primarily the story, and the consequences of the seduction of a Carmelite nun from the Convent of Subiaco. A voung hot-blooded Scotch doctor, on a visit to the town, is summoned to the convent on the occasion of the severe illness of the Mother Superior. He is thrown daily into contact with Maria Braccio, otherwise Maria Addolorata, a young and beautiful nun, with what consequences the reader of novels —if not of life —may easilv foresee. Not less pasionately enamoured than himself, the girl is induced to leave the convent and fly to an English man-of-war, where the couple are duly

married. There are some peculiarly horrible features associated with this flight, which, however, have the effect of covering up the traces of the deed and postponing almost indefinitely its poetical consequences. This story forms Book One. In Book Two we have passed on a generation, and find ourselves in the company of the only child of the marriage, a beautiful, high-spirited, but somewhat vulgar-minded girl, whose career in expiation of the deadly sin of her parents makes up the remainder of the novel. The 'revenges’ of time are shown to be truly appalling. None of those whose lives have been in any way affected by the ill-fated marriage but suffer disastrously through the contact, and poisoning by misadventure, suicide, and murder are among the resulting consequences. Is the novel, then, intended to bear a moral ? At any rate it is not one likely to affect the conduct of the reader, whose chances of marrying a Camelite nun are probably remote. Then, too, it would be possible and also interesting to treat the same theme from an entirely opposite standpoint with a moral at least equally conclusive, for though religion has its sacrilege, so also has nature. Casa Braccio is a finely-*ritteu absorbingly interesting story full of character-drawing of a high type, and embellished by all those subtleties and beauties of language in which Marion Crawford is a master. 'Casa Braccio.' by F. Marlon Crawford: Macmillan and Co. Paper 2s 6d.