BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XXIII, 4 June 1898, Page 707

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

SHREWSBURY. Those who are acquainted with Mr Stanley Weyman’s romances—and who is not? —will be certain to welcome with pleasure this new one from his pen. The scenes of ‘Shrewsbury’ are not laid, like those of so many of the author’s other books, in France, that pleasant land of chivalry and romance, but in work-a-day England; and ‘Shrewsbury’ is not the mighty fighting Talbot, the first earl of the name, the almost invincible antagonist of the Maid of Orleans, but only a descendant of his whose destiny led him rather to shine in the Council Chamber than at the head of armies—the Duke of Shrewsbury, Secretary of State to William the Third. Though the Duke plays an important part in the story, the interest follows chiefly the misfortunes of the very unheroic hero, who himself tells the tale of them. Misfortunes great and small, terrible and ludicrous, consistently dog this poor individual’s footsteps pretty well U P to the end of the book, when, at last, fortune smiles out upon him and we are allowed to assume that he lived happy ever afterwards. But all this misery and disaster are in a large measure caused by his own blundering pusillanimity, moral and physical. There are times, indeed, when we grow very impatient with poor Richard Price, good, well-mean-ing intelligent fellow though he be, and think he deserves all the misery inflicted on him by that arch scoundrel, Robert Ferguson, the plotter. The self-delineation of Richard Price is one of the best things that Mr Stanley Weyman has ever done. It is eapitaily done, and it is the sort of autobiography that few’ writers can handle well. The characters are well drawn throughout, though I fancy that for the character of William of Orange the author owes some debt to Macaulay. Mr Weyman seems to have very thoroughly imbibed the spirit of the time of which he writes, and he manages to make us quite realize the sense of political insecurity that must have prevailed throughout England when the chances were even that any day some plot might result in the good foreign king being ousted out of his seat on the English throne, while the bad native-born sovereign, recalled from his well-deserved exile, should again resume the crown. The interest of the book is well sustained throughout, and in more than one place the situation rises to a climax that may be warranted to thrill the pulse of the most phlegmatic reader. NEW ZEALAND. This is a contribution to ‘The Story of the Empire Series,’ by Mr Reeves, our Agent-General. He tells the story of New Zealand up to date clearly and concisely, and in a style that now and then bears distinct marks of literary merit, though he is prone, at times, to indulge in rather overelaborated antitheses. Commencing with some account of the country itself and the Maoris, he goes on to to recount the tale of New’ Zealand’s birth and growth as a colony, its early vicissitudes, its war troubles, its money troubles, its gold fevers, its democratic developments, and so on up to the present day. In his very rapid sketch of the political events of the latest years, regarding which he might say ‘quorum pars magna fui,’ Mr Reeves is, on the whole, fair and discreet. ‘SOLDIERING FIFTY YEARS AGO,’ ‘AUSTRALIA IN THE FORTIES.’ These reminiscences of Major de Winton, though recalled in a genial kindly spirit and written in a cheerful familiar style, are not of sufficient importance or of sufficient interest to recommend themselves to the general reader. Doubtless, however, there are many who, specially interested in time of which he writes, and in the places and people he describes and refers to, will be very glad to purchase and read this nicely bound and martial-looking volume. ‘A STRANGE SIN.’ This is the story whieh gives its title to that collection of stories, •The. Book of Strange Sins,’ now being republished separately, one by one. in pretty little booklets. Each story points a moral in vigorously realistic pictures. Though the particular sin denounced in the little volume before is too vaguely hinted at to be generally recognised, yet its effect on the sinner's conscience is described in

such a way as to make ‘A Strange Sin’ not the least effective story of the original collection. THE STORY OF THE MALAKAND FIELD FORCE. It is an interesting story, and especially interesting to all who, understanding the honorary value of India to the Empire, are eager to learn all they can in relation to those frontier defences of forts and forces which safe-guard the brightest jewel in the Biitish Crown. The story of the operations of the Malakand Field Force is well written, with a pen quick to describe to best advantage heroic incident and thrilling situation, and no' work of fiction could be more abundantly supplied with such incidents and situations than this true history of facts. It would seem from Lieutenant Churchill’s narrative that a British regiment on the war path is composed almost wholly of men who consider acts of heroism as mneh in their day’s work as the looking after their accoutrements. They make pleasant- reading—the doings of such men—and Lieutenant Cburehill’s crisp, soldierly style of relating them enhances the pleasure of the reading. The author discusses, with clearness and judgment, from the light of his own experience, the terribly’ complicated Frontier Question. From G. Ricordi and Co., 265 Regent street, London, we have received one of Paolo Tosti’s latest songs, which, in this case, is the musical setting of a sonnet. The words of the ‘Sonnet’ are melodiously and artistically translated from the French of Felix Arvers by’ Mowbray Marras. The song and its accompaniment offer no difficulties of execution to the voice and fingers, but the plaintive melody is not of the kind that is sure to be accepted at once with pleasure by the ear, as most of Tosti’s songs are won’t io be. But it gains on one the oftner it is heard. ‘Sonnet’ is published in the keys of A flat, of B flat and of F.

'Shrewsbury,' by Stanley Weyman: Longmans, Green & Co. ‘New Zealand,’ by William Pember Reeves: Horace Marshall & Co., 125 Fleet Street, London, E.C. ‘Soldiering Fifty Years Ago: Australia in the Forties.’ by Major de Winton: European Mail, Ltd., Imperial Buildings, Ludgate Circus. ‘A Strange Sin,’ by Coulson Kernahan: Ward. Lock & Co., Ltd. (Messrs Wildman & Lyell). 'The Story of the Malakand Field Force.’ by Winston L. Spencer Churchill: Longmans. Green & Co., 39 Paternoster Row, London and Bombay.