LITERARY.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXVI, Issue 36, 11 February 1905, Page 10

LITERARY.

TLere died in America lately a Colonel Prentiss Ingraham. who, according to the obituary appreciation?, wrote ever six hundred novels, besides a dozen plays and scores of short stories. It is needless to say that the whole of C'-oloncl Ingraharn's literary baggage was worthless. But it docs not follow that a fecundity of literary production is iiecossarily Bynonyinons with an inferiority of work. In -most cases it is. Even Byron and Wordsworth, by their fatal facility tc-r writing in numbers, jjave the world much quite unworthy of its authors. But the names of Balzac, Scoli. Duma.-, and George Sand conic to mind a-? examples of prolific writers who could scarcely have attained a higher fame 01 exercised a wider influence by taking more thought or time in the construction of their novels. Moreover, one oi them at least, George Sand, who produced over a hundred volumes in a comparatively short period, proved herself almost an impeccable artist in style: and although not read so widely by the general public as formerly, she is still a well of. inspiration to the professional writer of fiction. Ibsen, for instance, has drawn j liberally for his feminist conceptions irom the early novels of the great French women. Dumas, whose popui larity, despite a vicious style, is still world-wide, wrote, or, rather, signed, many romances that he. lost count. The anecdote is related that to a. friend, who surprised him laughing hugely over a book, and asked what work so tickled him, he replied. "Oh, it's only a little thing of my own that has quite escaped my memory." But while a facility of production in fiction is not necessarily a bar to immortality, the machine-made novel can never be a real work of art, a story of supreme perfection in ft vie, composition of characters-, and development of plot. The conditions of serial pnblication prevented both Dickons and Thackeray frona producing the ideal work of art in fiction. But. among very rare examples of perfection in the essential features may be cited "Madame Bovarr." "The Egoist." and "Tess;" and Blaubert, Meredith fend Hardy are conspicuous for their niggardly production when compared -with Scott. Balzac, Dumas and Sand, not to mention Colonel Ingraham. Queen Victoria's correspondence was so voluminous that it will not be possible to make it ready for publication before 10O«j. The volumes. ■Wβ are told, are to be illustrated by various unpublished portraits oi eminent public characters. Anthony Hope has been lecturing on the modern" novel. Naturally lie compared it with the novel of an earlier day. The one great question with the old style story, he maintained, was. "What'happened?" With the new style stnry. that, he added, was often not the point at all. or at best it was a subordinate and preliminary question to ••Why did that happen?"' Going on to sketch the main differences between the old and the new novel, he remarked incidentally that "in justice to the moderns, we must always remember that by the nature of the "case we are led to compare them, not with the rank ;md file of their predecessors, but with the eminent writers whose merit-* have preserved, their works for our edification." In the matter of form and 'structure. aT I»a.st. the moderns, in Anthony Hope's opinion, hold their own well. In these and other observation-s the lecturer seems to have taken a reasonable enough view of the matter, but from the report we have read, it appears that he said nothing about the chief point of difference between the old novel and the modern one. There is less genius in the latter. Too many critics of fiction treat it as though it were a ktnd of industrial product, turned out well or ill in a given acre according to the state of craftsmanship at the time. That phrase of Anthony Hope"s about the moderns holding their own in the matter of form and structure is characteristic. But it is the inspiration that counts, in fiction as in poetry. The trouble with so much of our modern fiction is that it has good form and structure, truth, brilliant dialogue, dramatic point, and yet somehow wants inspiration, wants the stamp of genius. A history of "Ivan the Terrible," by Iv. Waliszewski. translated from the French by Lady Mary Lloyd- is a kind of I apology for one of the most gruesome characters in history. Torture and extcution were Ivan's recreation and delignt no less than his instruments of justice. As a boy his amusement was to dogs down from the top of one of the castle terraces and watch their dying agonies. As a man he used to go the round of the torture chambers after dinner. One of his first crime? was the execution of his earliest frie.nd. Feodur Vorontsov; one of his last was the murder of his own son. Persons who displeased bim he would saw asunder by the constant rubbing of a rope round the waist, or sprinkle alternately with icecold and boiling water. He marked his sense of a bsd jest by deluging the perpetrator with boiling soup and then running a knife through him. He rebuked an unmannerly envoy by summoning a carpenter and ordering him to nail the man's hat on his head. There were also wholesale orgies, as at the punishment of Novgorod, when he had «i hundred persons roasted over a slow lire by a new and ingenious process, and then run down on sledges into the rivi-r to be drowned. Even the hardened populace of the time seems to have been staggered by this bloody circuit- for at Moscow the Tsar had a disappointment. There was to be "a great execution of 300 victims, who had already been toitured to the last extremity, and loyal subjects had been summoned to the function: "To Ivan's astonishment, the great square was empty. The instruments of torture that stood ready—the stoves, and red-hot pincers, and iron claws, and needles, the cords which were to rub human bodies into two halves, the great coppere full of boiling water — had failed to attract, this time. Whether at Sr. Petersburg or at Moscow, even down to the middle of the ISth century, no other sight could stir curiosity to such a point- and the audience was almost always very -numerous. But there had been too much of this sort of thing lately, and the executioners were growing too long-armed. Every man sought to hide deeper than his neighbour. The Tsar had to send reassuring messages all over the town. 'Come along! Don'tTbe afraid! Nobody will be hurt! . . .' At last, out of cellars and garrets, the necessary spectators were tempted forth., and forthwith Ivan, inexhaustible and quite unabashed, began a lengthy speech. 'Could he do less than punish the traitors? . . . But he had promised to be merciful, and be would keep his word? Out of the 300 who had been sentenced, 180 should have their lives!'" Ana this is the man who M. Waliszewski would have us believe is not so black as he is painted.