NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 449, 6 March 1909, Page 9

NOTES.

Mr. Samuel Kinnear, "the father of the Edinburgh printing trade," whoso death at the ago of 93, is just announced, spent the greater part of his lifo in Blackwood's, and had something to say on one occasion concerning the handwriting of' Professor Wilson:—" The last article Wilson wrote for ' Blackwood' was (Mr. Kinnoar told) so undecipherable that the men who got it to set up (of whom I was one), after examining it, handed it back to the.editor, saying it was beyond their power to make anything of it. At length, on being told that they might charge anything they liked for their trouble, they tackled it, and got up this literary mess in a kind of way, the- many blanks in the proof when it was sent to the author testifying to the work the compositors had to suffer, and their inability to decipher tho. professor's efforts at caligraphy." Double, the usual sum was afterwards paid for it to the compositors.

Novels aro rigorously tabooed at Westminster, but all tho latest fiction is to bo found in the Parliamentary libraries of Ottawa and Melbourne. Canadian and Australian M.P.'s can read novels under the Speaker's nose with impunity, as Mr , . Deakin habitually does, or they may borrow them for liomcrending if "they choose. In the report of the Library Committee of the Commonwealth Parliament, just laid upon the table, it is stated that " more than 1000 books, other than notion, were issued to hon. members during the past 12 months." Apparently (remarks an English paper) the committee keep no record of fiction, or perhaps they .discreetly refrain from publishing the figures.

In thanking the University of Virginia for itc invitation to attend tho Poo centenary celebration, Mr. Thomas Hardy writes as follows:—" Why one who has in many ways disadvantageously circumstanced for the development of the art of poetry should have been the first to realise to the full the possibility of the. English language in rhyme a-iid alliteration is not easily explicable. It is a matter for curious conjecture whether his achievements in verse would have been the same'if the fivo years of childhood spent in England had been expanded to adult life. That 'unmerciful disaster' hindered those achievements from being carried further must be an endless regret to lovers of good poetry."

No series of biographies\(says the "Westminster Gazette") has achieved a success and retained after a goodly numbor of years, a vitality so marked as Messrs. Macmillan's "English Men of Letters," which made its debut just over thirty years ago, with the late Sir ■ Leslio Stephen's admirable _ monograph on Johnson. Since then the series has been reissued in various forms, and now wo have tho announcement that it is to be republished in a pocket edition in shilling volumes. To many a young man the English Men of Letters Series completed what had been begun by such. a book as Macaulay's Essays—it permanently attracted him to tho charms of literature, and not a few are grateful for the service thus rendered _ by tho scholarly volumes. As originally intended, Lord Morley—Mr. John Morley as he then was, and as we still know him best in literature —was to have written several of the volumes, in addition to the Burko which proved to bo the solo contribution to the series from his pen. "George Eliot" was expected to have written on Shakespeare, but the life of tho great dramatist was not included in the original series at all, and was only written quite recently by Professor Ttaicigh for the second series. It is said that R. L. Stevenson was anxious to become a contributor, but with his reputation as yet unmade his overtures were rejected. Although balked in this way, in his endeavour to bo connected with tho English Men of Letters Series, lie may yet have his revenge, for it is not altogether unlikely that we may ,see a monograph of him included in it some day.

A correspondent of tho "Times of India" describes an Urdu performance of "Hamlet" and Sheridan's "l'izarro" The "Hamlet" is entitled "Khoon-i-Nahak " '.—"Both tragedies undergo considerable alteration in the process of translation. But this is mado necessary, I was told, by tho Indian audience's dislike of pure tragedy' and lovo of farce. Tho very slight comic relief which Shakespeare provided in ' Hamlet' is replaced in ' Khoon-i-Nahak' by an elaborate farcical underplot of servant love, while- a more romantic turn is given to tho story by tho introduction of a rival lover of Meherbanoo (Ophelia). A similar farce, also suggested by the Oriental conception of tho humours of lovo and marriage, has intruded itself, perhaps more justifiably, into the sombre play of Sheridan. It is true that these innovations havo littlo real connection with the main purpose of tho play. But to a European they are very interesting as illustrations of other sides of Indian dramatic genius. Tho minor female roles aro performed by boys. Those particularly interested me, for I have often wondered how the boys of the Elizabethan stage in England could bo drilled into roally losing their identity in the characters they represented. But when I found myself speculating whether these were boys or gins and when I saw tho thorough way in which they entered into the spirit of their roles— especially the "urchin of Aseor-i-Hirs—l was no longer surprised that the boy actors of Shakespeare's time at ono period drove their adult rivals out of popular favour."

Tho recent prize competitions for novels (says tho " Nation") havo called into existence a hug© crowd of manuscripts which now threaten to cause sonio embarrassment to publishers and their readers. One of the (inns offering a prizo for the best novel-sent them received nearly four hundred manuscripts, and allowing for an equal number having been called forth by other competitions—a very moderato estimate—wo havo a total of eight hundred now novels aspiring for publication in addition to the normal supply which comes from practised writers of fiction. Most of tho writers who failed to gain a pri/.o arcs now offering their manuscripts to other publishers, and we havo heard of one reador who received four large boses filled with manuscript fiction in a single week. One publisher suggests that the best way of dealing with the congestion is to have a central office in which all readers' reports might be filed for reference,