LITERARY CHAT.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1 May 1900, Page 636

LITERARY CHAT.

By Danveks Hamber

Through Messrs. Whitcombe and Tombs, of Ohristehureh, Wellington, and Dunedin, Mr. James Hight, M.A., Chief Master of Modern Languages at the Auckland College and Grammar School, has published an extremely interesting and useful little book called Introduction and Notes to Carh/Ws Sartor Resartw. The author's introduction makes very entertaining reading, and though he has little that is new to say of the " Sage of Chelsea's " work, all will admire the earnestness and faithfulness with which he writes. The chapter on Carlyle's style in Sartor Besartus is very well done, and shows — as indeed does the whole of the booklet — that Mr. Hight has an intimate acquaintance with the work that many minds have declared to be Carlyle's masterpiece. The notes are very full, especially so in regard to German references, but at the same time there is a certain amount of purely dictionary matter which could very well have been left out. The book should be valuable not only to students, but to anyone desiring to obtain a thorough knowledge of Sartor Eesaatus and Carlyle's style.

Flights from the Land of the Bell-Bird and the Rata, is the delusive title of a book written by S. E. Blacke, printed by the Brett Printing Company, and published by Messrs. Wild man and Lyell, of Auckland. The author on the title page states that the volume contains " a collection of short stories illustrative of life in New Zealand." Alas, for the colony, that these weak imaginings

should be considered as true pictm-es of life within her shores ! There are nine stories in the book, three of them have appeared in print before, but the others, the author says, are " fresh." It may be cruel, but it is cruel only to be kind to say that it were better if S. E. Blacke had another bent. The author undoubtedly possesses a sympathetic nature, and that, perhaps, would find a better outlet in district visiting rather than in an attempt at literature. lv the former style, grammar and expression do not cotint, but in the latter they are absolutely essential, for public appreciation must come before success. There is a goody-goody sentiment running through most of the " flights," and now and then the author attempts to be mildly wicked. All the stories bear the stamp of time, that is, they appear to have had any amount of it spent upon them. The labour has been one of love with the writer, but the results are far from satisfactory. It is a pity no doubt. But the field of literatui'e is one where only the most careful culture can bring forth fruit, and did one praise the efforts of S. "R. Blacke, it would be ploughing the fallow for others as ambitious and inexperienced. Only disappointment can follow the publication of such offsprings of the imagination.

Mr. Frederick J. Moss is re-issuing his book Through Atolls and Islands in the Great South Sea, published in 1889 by Messrs. Sampson Low, Marston and Co., of Loudon. The book is an account of a seven months'

voyage among the least frequented groups of the South Sea Islands. Many changes have taken place since the author wrote his excellent description of places, men and manners in Fiji and Tonga, and m Hawaii, but the work is still as interesting and valuable as it was ten years ago. The book is now on sale at three shillings and sixpence, and I believe it can be obtained from any bookseller in Auckland. It would make a splendid gift-book for boys, for it is full of incident and adventure, while anybody of elder age who is interested in Polynesian history ought to possess a copy.

The latest volume of Messrs. Oliphant Anderson and Ferrier's excellent " Famous Scots Series" is by Sir George Douglas. James Hogg deals not only with the Scottish shepherd, prose writer and poet, but with a few other versifiers who have written some poems that shall make them remembered for all time. But it is mainly of the " .hittrick Shepherd " that Sir George Douglas writes with graceful and facile pen. James Hogg's prose and poetry have been highly praised, and have been just as heartily maligned. Sir George Douglas says : " Hoggs' songs lack the passion and rich humour of the best of Burn's ; neither have they the pathos or the artistic finish of those of Lady Nairne, yet the best among them — When the Kye comes Same, or inspired by the poet's Jacobite researches, Caw? ye by Athol, and Flora Mac Donald's Farewell — have won and kept a place side by side with the above in the hearts and memories of the Scottish people. And this is a far surer and truer immortality than any to be conferred by critics or academies. On the other hand, Hogg's epics or metrical romances have no structural inspiration, and are failures and forgotten. It is by the most popular of his songs, then, by two or three of the tales of Tkc Queen's Wake, and by the best of the prose tales that Hogg's name lives. In these prose tales he has incorporated the whole

body of the floating popular mythology of Scotland — a fact which, should the day over come when the stories fail to charm as stories, will still command for them the regard of students of history and folk-lore." Sir Goorgo Douglas rightly doubts whether Hogg was the drunkard aud^clodhopper his detractors have made him out to be. Ho only says '• "In Hogg, side by side with so much that was simple-hearted, good-natured, loveablo, side by side also with what wo may almost describe as a blind upward aspiration — there was undeniably a certain tendency to loudness, a certain self-complacency which, when it ceased to be naif, became tiresome." I should mention that the volumes in this " Famous Scots Series " are published at one shilling and sixpence, and that the publishers are an Edinburgh firm. ■«— Greek verse lends itself excellently to translation when the work is incompetent hands. Mr. W. H. D. House in An Echo of Greek Song, published by Dent and Co., of London, has accomplished his self-appointed task with delicate taste and finished skill. The Englished versions comprise love poems, epitaphs, humorous and other poems. This love song from Agathias is very pretty : " The live long night I mourn, und when tho day A moment's rest has brought, Cheep-cheeping swallows drivosweet sleep away, And tears start wolling from my wakeful oyes ; Again before my thought Flitting Eodanthe's image soems to rise. Peace, envious chatterers, peace : it was not I Shore Philoniola/s tongue ; Mourn Itylus among the mountains — fly To the wild caves of Epops, thither wing And let me rest, not long, Dreaming Rodanthe's arms about me cling." Then the translation of the famous inscription which Simmias wrote for Sophocles is really beautiful : " Twine gently o'er hie tomb, oh, gently twine Ivy, with all the wealth of curling green, All round be roses blooming, and the vine

Fling her soft tendril's and steep climbing screen. To him the Graces and the Muses brought Their honey — magic speech and lofty thought." Very rarely in the course of its valuable existence has Mudie's circulated a book containing a libel, and more rarely has the great book-distributing firm been proceeded against for so doing. However, last month Mr. Edward Vizetelly, a noted war correspondent and journalist, sued the firm for damages. In 1888 he was engaged by the New York Herald to go to Africa and hunt for Stanley, who was himself scouring the Dark Continent for Emm Pasha. Mr. Vizetelly did come across Stanley, but not until the great explorer had fallen in with Emm Pasha. Some little time afterwards Messrs. Archibald Constable and Co. — not the Queen's Printers in Edinburgh of that style and title — published a book called The Life and Works of Emm Pasha. In that work was this paragraph : " He— Vizetelly — sent off three messengers to-day to the coast, each with a bulky letter. However as he — Vizetelly — is not yet sober, he surely cannot have written them himself, and the solution of the problem is, as Dr. Parke tells us, simply that Stanley had the correspondence ready, and knocked it down to the highest bidder." Mr. Vizetelly, in examination, said that he had to get a letter from Stanley for the Herald, and he got it. And that the sending away of this letter led to the confusion. When he saw the book at the end of 1898, he wrote to Mudie's, and directly afterwards notices were issued calling in the book. The work was originally published in Berlin, and Messrs. Constable had it translated and published in London. Ultimately Mr Vizetelly recovered ;£LOO damages and his costs from Mudie's. He got a similar sum and costs from Messrs. Constable without going into court, and he compromised with the Grosvenor Gallery Library for a sum of ten guineas and his costs. An action against Messrs. W. H. Smith and Son was depending on the result

of the action against Mudie's, and as they would probably compromise on good terms for Mr. Vizetelly, he has not done so badly out of the case. The incident will act as a warning to circulating libraries, and for the future no doubt every boole will be carefully read by an expert in libel law before being distributed. <&. Mbssts. Upton and Co., of Auckland, have forwarded me the latest volume of Longman's Colonial Library, Sir Patrick : The Puddock, by Mrs. L. B. Walford. .It is quite refreshing to find a Scotswoman writing a story with a Highland hero and Highland scenery, in the English language. The " Kail-yard " dialect is all very well, but it has had its day in novels ; at any rate we can do without it for a few years to come. And Mrs. Walford has done well to give us Sir Patrick's charming love story in the tongue she always uses so brightly and delightfully. It was in 1874 that Mrs. Walford published her first novel, Mr. Smith, a story that attained a popularity that has vet to wane. The Bahfs Grandmother, in my opinion Mrs. Walford's chef d'ceuvre, appeared in 1885, and since then very few years have passed by without the publication of one or more of this gifted lady's stories. Sir Patrick : The Puddock has all the charm of the earlier works. It is bright, it is interesting, there is not a chapter that is dull, and after reading it one feels all the better for meeting Mary Harborough and Sir Patrick Kinellan, and one has a desire to shake hands heartily with honest Jonathan Mercer, The plot is slight, and it is unwoven very delicately, therefore it would spoil the reading to outline it here. Certainly Sir Patrick is a book that will be enjoyed immensely. + The other day I was reading some extracts from The Life and Letters of Henry Cecil Baikes, written by his sou, Mr. Henry St. John Raikes. Mr. Raikes was the late

Postmaster - General in Lord Salisbury's Ministry, and though he was a very hard worker, and his responsible office gave him little time for recreation, be found a slight leisure for literature. And he wrote well. He frequently indulged in clever political skits, and as this habit was known, he often got credit or blame when one or the other should have fallen on other shoulders. His son quotes a story relating to the late Mr. Peter Rylands, some time Liberal Member for Burnley. Mr. Rylands was not, to say the least, a member who could command the attention of the House when debating, but he was a man of sterling worth. The story Mr. Raikes quotes is as follows : "On one occasion, when he was on his legs and appeared likely to remain there for some time, his unpopularity as a speaker was brought home to him in a somewhat unkind manner. As he proceeded with his indictment of the Government, a slip of paper began to travel along the benches, and in its course aroused considerable merriment. At length it reached the orator, and on looking at it he was confronted with the following doggerel : ' Preposterous Peter, prithee cut it short ; That Dizzy doeth what he didn't ought We know. Yet life were sweeter, Which gave ten Dizzys and dispensed with Peter.' The cruel part of it was that the effusion emanated from his own side of the House." At the time the late Postmaster- General was credited with the authorship of the above lines, but afterwards it transpired that Sir Wilfrid Lawson wrote them. Why Mr.

Raikes does not mention tins in his book, J. fail to sec. 'J hough Sir Wilfrid is a rabid teetotaler, he possesses a rare sense of humour, and if all the doggerel he has written in the House could be collected and published, the result would be a very amusing little volume. . — s, It is not often that a Bishop has started as a politican, made a name as a soldier, and then earned honour as a parson. Yet Bishop Whipple, Bishop of Minnesota, had boon the two former before he was ordained in 1849. He has" been engaged in the ovangoliaation of the Red Indians and the support of their rights in regard to the government of the United States, for many years, and in his book, Lights and Shadows of a Long Episcopate, lately published by Macmillan and Co., he deals very interestingly with many matters. The Bishop allows that though Canada had a less difficult task than America in dealing with the Indian question, she has not done quite so well as she might have done. Bishop Whipple is evidently a good all round man. He is a great angler, and he tells of tarpon fishing in Florida, Ho says that the largest ever landed there was caught by a lady. It weighed 1021 b, and measured eight feet, two inches. Telling the story of the landing of that tarpon, the Bishop says : " After playing the fish for a long time she naturally grow a little weary, and her husband offered to relieve her. 'If you touch that rod,' she cried, 'I shall apply for a divorce ! '"