BOOKS and AUTHORS.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVII, Issue I, 4 July 1896, Page 11

BOOKS and AUTHORS.

A LITERARY CAUSERIB fob COLONIAL BOOKBUYERS and BORROWERS. HOOKS nrarkeb tbaa C*> *«w arrieeb in tba colang, ana mW at t*« lima of mriting be narcbaacb la tba principal colonial bookabopa, anb bommeb at tba librariea. for tba eoaaaniaaea of eaaairg combine mbo fab bifficaltg in procariag tba latent booka ana aem ebitiona, the ■BOOKHAN mill tana to anf Ham Zealanb abbreaa ang boob mkicb can be obtaineb. Ho notice mill, of couraa, ba taken of raqaesta anaccomoanieb bg remittance to •oarr postage aa mail aa pabiiaheb price of book. ft la reqaeateb that onlg tboaa mho finb it impoaaible to procare booba tbraagb the orbi earg ehannele. ahoulb take aboantage of thia afar. The labour inooloed mill be heaoy entirely on remunerative, nt *««< or commission being taken. Queries and Correspondence on Literary Natters Incited AU Communications and Commissions must be addressed THE BOOKMAN,’ Graphic Office, Auckland. 'Allan's Reels, Strathspeys, and General Dance Music,' 'Morven’s Collection of Scottish Songs, Part IV.' * Allan's 110 Songs of Scotland, Without Words.' WE have received those three works from the wellknown publisher of Scottish music, Mr Mozart Allan, of 70, South Portland-street, Glasgow. In the first book there is, among other dance music, such a wealth of reels and strathspeys that even a Scot, little versed in the musical lore of his native country, could not fail to find among them some that are familiar to him, and touch him in this far land of his adoption, like a breeze from Scottish hills laden with the notes of the bagpipes, now madly merry, now piercingly sad. Even the Sassenach ear, that loves not the melodies of the bagpipes, will surely catch the charm of such music as ‘ The Duchess of Gordon,’ ‘ Tullochgorum,’ ’The Wind that shakes the Barley ’ when the piano interprets it to them in a simple arrangement like the one now before us. Part IV. of the ‘ “ Morven ” Collection of Scottish Songs * is composed of many familiar, and some not so familiar, Scotch songs which are widely loved throughout the world by music lovers of all nationalities. The accompaniments are very simple and harmonions. * Allan’s 110 Songs of Scotland Without Words 'is a capital arrangement for the pianoforte of the airs of well-known Scottish songs. Its simplicity would make it very suitable for those beginning to learn the pianoforte.

Indeed, the simplicity and cheapness of these three collections bring them within the compass of almost everyone’s skill and purse.

Joaquin Miller’s new book of poems, * Songs of the Soul,’is the result of the poet’s ten years’ hermit-like meditation on the Heights. In the preface Joaquin Miller says: *lt may be a bold thing to sing by our own great sea bank instead of abroad, as before, but I have faith in my own people, and believe the time has come to keep our work at home.’ The volume contains, besides a large number of poems that have appeared in the public prints, though never before in book form, many new productions of the poet’s genius, notably ‘ Sappho and Phaon,’ embracing * The Songs of the Soul.’ The poet dedicates the work • To Mother,’ and the prelude is in the following beautiful strain:

Long years, lorn years apart, a one. Despite man’s rage or woman's ruth. I kept my cloud-capped heights of stone To watch for light, to toil for truth.

And oh, the voices I have heard ! Such visions when the morning grows— A brother's soul in some sweet bird, A sister's spirit in a rose.

And oh. the beauty I have found ! Such beauty, beauty everywhere; The beauty creeping on the ground. The beauty singing in the air.

The love in all, the good in all. The God in all. in all that is ; But oh, I stumble to my fall. To try to tell a tithe of this!

Poor falt’ring tongue ' Each rambling tale. Save here and there a ray of light, Reads as some tavern of the vale. Instead of God's house on some height.

But take these flowers : tears and toil Have meshed them in most sad array ; Yet if some weed, some wood, some soil. A tear may wash the moil away.

Dr. A Conan Doyle has been writing letters to the Weetinmater Gazette from Cairo on the British campaign in Egypt. Here is a description of one of the parting scenes as the troops board the train for Dongola : ' A crown of red-fezzed Egyptians and sun-helmeted Europeans are looking silently on without much sign of sym-

pathy. A long-legged, red-coated dragoon wanders through the ranks looking for a pal. He finds him at last, just in front of me—a stocky little infantryman, all hat and knapsack. “Bye, Bill!** says the dragoon. ••Bye!” says the other, hardly glancing at him. Two Frenchmen would have been in each other’s arms. Yet it cannot be want of feeling, or why should the dragoon wander about in that blazing Cairo sun looking for his pal ?* REWARDS OF LITERATURE. Not all of the truly worthy authors of past times have been condemned to penury and vagabondage. Some of them, on the contrary, have acquired fortunes by reason of the liberal compensation they received for their work. Scott was paid for one of his novels at the rate of £5 per day for the time employed in writing it, and his total literary earnings aggregated £300,000. Byron got £4, 000 for ‘ Childe Harold ’ and £3, 000 for ‘ Don Juan.’ Moore sold ‘Lalla Rookh ’ for Z 3,150, and his ‘lrish Melodies ’ brought him £9,000. Gray received only /40 for his poems, and not a cent, for the immortal * Elegy,' out of which the publisher made Z’l,ooo, but that was because he had an eccentric prejudice against taking money for writing. Tennyson had an annual income of from £3,000 to /’io.ooo for many years, though in the early part of his career, when he wrote ' Maud ’ and *ln Memoriam,* he realized next to nothing. Longfellow sold his first poems, including some of his best ones, at very low figures, but he lived to receive /800, or £4 a line, for ' The Hanging of the Crane,’ and when he died he was worth £70,000. Whittier left an estate of /40,00 c ; and several of the leading American prose writers have done quite as well. These are exceptions, it is true, but they serve to modify the general rule, and to show that, in cases of superior merit, literature has proved to be notably profitable.

Mr Arthur Waugh has been explaining (says the Literary World) the true inwardness of a practice that is getting common among certain London publishers :— •It would appear that nowadays no book can be called successful which does not pass through several editions before it is published at all. This morning’s papers are full of advertisements of a new book by a well-known purveyor of sensational fiction, whose story is not to be issued till Monday, and will then be in its fourth edition. Whether the public is taken in by this sort of thiug or not. it is difficult to say ; but it is certainly the cheapest kind of manipulation. It means either one of two things. The publisher may, firstly, have underrated the number of copies likely to be sold upon subscription, and so given a first printing order inadequate to the demand ; or, secondly, he may have printed the words ‘First Edition” upon the first few thousand, “Second” on the next batch, and so on. In neither case do the additional copies constitute a genuine edition, which means, if it means anything, a reprint rendered necessary by the exhaustion of stock placed upon the market in the usual course of business. It is really time that these tricks of the cheap hucksters were discarded by self-respecting writers. Soaps and mustards have their methods, but one wishes better treatment for even the most vulgar and incompetent of novels.’

The June number of the Pall Mall Magazine, which we have just received, maintains the usual high excellence of style and matter characteristic of that magazine. An interesting article in it on the deservedly popular Australian poet, Adam Lindsay Gordon, will be sure to attract the attention of Australasians and of all lovers of horseflesh. Amongst much else that is good is an article, suitably illustrated, on Emile Wanters, the first Flemish artist of the present day ; another on ‘ The New Photography of the Invisible,’ by A. A. C. Swinton ; a chatty paper on ‘ Early Romances of the Century,’ by the Countess of Cork and Orrery ; also the continuation of Sir Walter Besant’s 'City of Refuge,’ and a couple of crisply-written stories, one dealing with a ghost, the other with an elephant's tusk. The numerous illustrations, beaded by the frontispiece— a charming etching from a painting by A. H. Schram, entitled, ‘ A House of Call, Venice ’ —are each and all very good of their kind.