NOTES.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 490, 24 April 1909, Page 9

NOTES.

In connection with the welcome proposed to be -given by the journalistic and literary members of the House of Commons to th-6' delegates attending the Imperial Press Conference in London early in June, it is being recalled thfiit the British Prime Minister is suspected or having at some time dabbled in journalism. ' Mr. Asquith, in so doing, followed several illustrious examples (says the Westminster Gazatte"). Among Prime. Ministers who havo contributed to the gaiety and enlightenment of the . nation through the medium of newspapers have been Canning, whose name will always bo associated 'with'.- the " Anti-Jacobin "; Melbourne, • who wrote for the "Literary Gazette":; Palnierston,: Eussell, and Gladstone, each of whom furnished letters or articles to the "Morning Chroniclo"; and Salisbury, who was a leader-writer for the "Standard," as well as the "Saturday Review." Disraeli, despite liis sneer on one occasion at " journalists whohave' become statesmen, or statesmen who Dave .become journalists,"- was glad to have his " Runnymede" series of betters' published in, " The Times," "though liis connection with the " Bep;esen«.tive " . was unsatisfactory. It was left ,to -Mr. Balfour to say that ho did. not road netfspapjM-s, in unconscious imitation of a fatuous and pJmost: forgotten. predecessor in the Premiership of a cer/tury and a half before. Yet it was" the Duke of Wellington who detested " newspapering" tho most/ ■...

Sir A. Conan Doyle has a poem in the "Cornhill".entitled "Shakespeare's Expostuktion." Here is an extract: .' ■■'■■■■ v ;Ydu prate about my learning. .-"-I would urgo My want of.learning rather as a proof That lam still myself. Have I not triced A seaboard to.Bohemia, and made ■:' • The.cannons roar a wholo wide conturv Before the first was forged?- Think you,,then, That he, the ever-learned Verulam, AVo'uld thus have erred? So. may my very faults In their gross falseness provo that I am true, And by that falseness gender truth in you..

..One of the. ; things,(says the.-'''Manchester Guardian") that go to" prove indirectly tho. inadequacy of tho judgment of the great critic, of the last 1 generation, that Shelley's letters' are more likely to survive than his poetry, is tho -.comparative calmness with which tho public haje received the announcement, that there is to be published in April, under: tho editorship 'of .Mr. Roger Ingpon, an immensely augmented edition of the poet's correspondence. Some four hundred and fifty letters are to be included, and yot if the announcement had been instead that a single spic-and-span lyric, a sonnet, or even a quatrain of Shelloy was to be given to the public, the interest ,, , it may ta conjectured, would have been far more intense. Shelley enthusiasts will of.oourse.be on tho'qui vive. They will welcome every 'new detail in tho poet's life and every new light shed upon the character of his circle. Shelley has the power of creating such lovers. But thoro is a general feeling that, whatever letter, may leap to light, none will excel thoso of the series written'from Rome to Peacock, Whether for the glowing poetry of their style or the intimacy into which they bring a reader with one of the most fascinating per.sonalities of all our .modem literature. There is one letter, however, to which, when the book is published, many readers will at once turn. ,It 13 onowritten to Mary and bearing date December 15, 1816. It has been openly said that a passage has been omitted becauso it would hayo prevented a favourablo construction being put upon Shelley's conduct at. a certain stago of the Harriet erubroglio. Tho charge may be false, but the only perfectly satisfactory way of refuting it will bo the publication of the letter in

One of the contributors to "New ; Songs," an anthology of contemporary .verse, published by Chapman and Hall, is a hammerman employed on tho Groat Western Railway, . named Allied Owen Williams. He is tho son of a village carpenter, and was born, in the.little villago of South Marston, lying in the rioh valley of tho White Horse, in the year 1877. -At eight years of ago he started work oh a farm, three years later,he left school entirely, and when fourteen obtained a situation as a , rivet lad in tho railway works at Swindon, four miles distant from his home. From rivot lad he passed to the position of steam-hammer driver, thence to the furnaco and forge, and filially became a hammerman. Whilo still in liis 'teens, Williams learned shorthand and discovered a taste for painting, , which i for a period he prosecuted in oils. -It'was not till ho was twenty that he turned his' thoughts, in the direction of poetry. An anthology, "Sweetness and light," compiled by the late Mr. W. Thompson, set his mind in the direction of literature, and ho began to study Milton and Shakespeare.: Then he joined a correspondence class at Ruskin Hall in English literaturo,.and he determined to learn Latin. It speaks volumes for his perseverance that, notwithstanding his limited leisure, his progress in that-languago soon enabled him to read the easy authors, and then he boldly struck out into, tho deeper .waters'. Afterwards he mastered. French, and Greek. Much of his study was, done before, fivo in the morning, while it was often past midnight before tho student's lamp was extinguished. Williams is evidently a man who would have delighted the late author of "Self-Help."

' If the conjecture is correct that Mr. John Davidson, tho poet, committed . suicide because, as lie stated in a document found after his disappearance, lie bear his sufferings from cancer, the following little peem is sadly prophetic. Under tho t-itlo of "Tho Gift," it appears in Davidson's "Tho Last Ballad and Other.Poems," published in 1899: ' Solacing tears,' : The suppliant's sigh, • Repentant years, . Tho fates deny; Dut ; tortured breath Has one ally, • The gift of death. The power to die.