NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 467, 27 March 1909, Page 9

NOTES.

Certain correspondents of tho New York "Nation" havo been discussing parallels to tho thought in Mr. Bourdiilon's well-known song beginning The night has a thousand eyes. Tho day but one. The discussion has rambled a bit, and, after touching on John Lyly—that master of all tho concettisti—and Joshua Sylvester, seems to havo ended far enough away/ from its original starting point, in tho familiar epigram in tho anthology ascribed to Plato: "Thou, my star, at tho stars art gazing; would that I were heaven that I might behold thee with many eyes." Is it a sign (asks an English paper) that Shelley is not being read iu the United States that that epigram can bo quoted without any allusion to the stanza that closes the Ninth.Canto of the "Revolt, of Islam"? That stauza not only embodies tho best translation of tho epigram in tho English language, but presents withal a beautiful picture inspired with exquisite passion:—

Though she had ceased, her countenanco uplifted To Heaven, still spake, with solemn glory ■ bright; Her dark deep eyes, her lips whose motions gifted The air they breathed with love, her locks undight. '

"Fair star of life and love," I cried, "my soul's delight,.

Whv lookest thou on the crystalline skies? Oh, that my spirit were yon Heaven of night Which gazes on cbee with its thousand eyes!" She turned to me and smiled—that smile was Paradise!

Those people who profess to read character \ from handwriting (says tho "Glasgow Herald") are an interesting, becauso a highly imaginative, set. We are apt to regard the Germans as peoplo of pedestrian, rather than imaginative, instincts; yot it is from Germany that there comes to-us the report of a discovery of three largo sheets of Shakespeare's testament —his will, presumably—"said to bo written by a clerc, a saying not based on a single fact, but contradicted by more than one," wo aro assured by the editors of "Der Mcnschenkenncr," which is published at Leipzig by Otto Wigand, and who are so kind as to send us the new's. We need not at present troublo about' the authenticity of these three pages; sufficient for tho present is tho deduction of character drawn from them by Fraulein (or Frau) Magdalene Thumm-Kint-zel. Wo are told by our German authority that

"the pedantic, unpoetical handwriting of Francis Dacon is hero compared with the highly genial, poetical and artistic strokes of tho testament, and the signatures of William Shakespeare. They arc described as following: 'Tho handwriting of the testament and the signatures reveals tho character, tho mind and tho gifts of a giant and is worthy of being placed beside the handwriting of a Beethoven or a Goethe. Bacon's handwriting, though, shows a busy and serious scientist, too serious andlmmor- . less for Shakespeare's works. But a poet? No! It shows'a politician and • a lawyer, but a poet's, phantasy and imagination?' Never!'". , ' > These investigations are, we are assured, "tho first attempt of solving the Shakes-peare-Bacon question on tho base of handwriting, and deserve the consideration of all literary men."

■ ! One curious feature of the book-barrow, pointed out by a contributor to "T.P.'s weekly," is its lack of fiction. Samuel Itogors used to say that in his day, as soon as a novel had had its run and was forgotten out camo an edition of it as a' standard novel. Then there were no peripatetic vendors of second-hand books, and old novels lagged superfluous on the shelves of the circulating libraries. Now tho destructor absorbs them apparently, for tho barrows make ample provision only of the mind's more solid food.

In a preface to a new volume of old essays, Mr. Birrell tells us that ho readily assented to the publication of the book because "circulation is an author's life." Ho has no sympathy with the claim of authors "for perpetual copyright, for property, not privilege, in their writings." That claim is, he says, "a dream.": "In the first placo the essence of. property in things not consumable is the right of total exclusion. 'Keep off the grass.' 'I want niv things for myself.' But no author really wants to keep his hook to himself. Above everything else lie wants the world to read them. Secondly, perpetual copyright would not add a penny picco to the present value of a manuscript—poem or novel, or historv, or metaphysical or scientific treatise. Publishers aro not thinking, and cannot be made to think of sales a century hence. They know the average life of a book only too well. Thirdly, in the case of thoso rare authors whom Charles Lamb has called 'Great Nature's Stereotypes,' posterity will never allow 'Paradiso Lost'/to be the property of Mr. Jacob Tonson and his assigns, or the 'Pilgrim's Progress' to belong to Air. Ponder and his successors in business • and yet, unless works of genius are to be unsaleable and curtailed in strict settlement upon the author and his noxt heirs for ever this is what must happen." Circulation, Mr. Birrell, adds, is the thing. Yet he would have no man presume upon it or rashly believe bis books immune from the ordinary

Mr. Edwin Pugh, tho novelist, has written a book called Charles Dickens, tho Apostle of the People," in which ho endeavours to prove that tho great writer was a Socialist. A coupe of columns aro given to a criticism of the. book by the "Athenaeum," which points out that Dickons and Mr. Pugh are poles apart in their standpoints. Private benevolence, esteemed by Dickens as an impulse- sacred and ennobling, is to Mr. Pugh " a .. ~ S back in paltry doles" of a portion of "unearned increment, the fruits of a wicked spoliation of the poor and needy, and "the Brothers Cheeryblc," he says, are altogether abominablo and. raise our gorge. Dickens had no sympathy with the doctrine of "tho brotherhood of man"— equality, as understood bv modern propagandists. Despite occasional attacks on the bad old times," Dickens was a believer in tho ok order, purged of its abuses, and of tho old order class distinctions are an integral part. Dickens preached tenderness and sympathy towards tho poor, not because they ought to bo as well-to-do as their-neigh-bours, but because they are tho poor—an intrinsic part of the social fabric; he attacked public scandals—those personified in Bumble and Squeers, or debtors' prisons and tho criminal laggardness of Chancery— not bccauso tho tystem which evolved them is a wrong system, but because such phenomena aro malevolent growths on an othonviso healthy body—a root conception far removed from tho Socialistic ideal.

A very interesting account is given by tho "Pioneer" of a "modem" philosopher who died 850 years ago. Ho was a Persian— Abu'l Ala aUMa'ari—and lie is claimed to bo the inspiration, if not the model, of Omar Khayyam. Some of his translated verses ccrta_in.lv road very like Fitzgerald. Philosophically he is of the school of Mr. Bernard Shaw, in that ho "spent his wholo life- in waging; war against orthodoxy," and "remained a strict vegetarian for thirty years, was a vehement opponent .of tho killing of animals either for food or sport, and had a strong aversion to marriage." According to bis biographer, theso idiosyncrasies account for tho superficial references to him in Arabic literature.