The Ellesmere Guardian. WEDNESDAY, JULY 29,1891. Notes by the Way.

Ellesmere Guardian, Volume X, Issue 930, 29 July 1891, Page 3

The Ellesmere Guardian. WEDNESDAY, JULY 29,1891. Notes by the Way.

It is interesting to notice that just now when Bkllany's io engaging the attention of New Zealand politicians, a strong party m the English House want to turn ' Bellamy's Kitchen ' into t. sort of Temperance Hotel. One Hon, Member wanted to move the other day to thc effect • that ho license shonld m future be granted for the sale of intoxicating liquors within the precincts of the Honse.' Unfortunately for the Hon, teetotaller, no license is required, Westminster being a ** ltoyal Palace,' and as no license is required, none can be refused. But the question will be raised during the discussion of the ° i Estimates. Ip the detached rumours regarding the Land Bill are true, it is decidedly a drastic measure. Five years penal ser tritudo for holding over two thousand acres of laud is a heroic remedy for the land fever, Section 85 of tho Bill as drafted limits the area to be held bjr any

[•erson to 2000 acres, including not more than G4O acres of fii'st class land. Section 80 provides that any person who muk es a false declaration under the Act •shall l.c liable to five years' imprison mei.t. A., a man cannot >;et moro than •20(H) acres without making such a declaration, of course ho is therefore liable to punishment. rp.s.Bi,v no author is more widely lead by certain classes than Mademoi bei.T-B db la Bameb, or as she chooses to call herself " Ouida." But popular ity is not always a tost of merit. If it were, then Miss Hraddon jtnil Mas Henry Wood' were giants compared to Thackeray or to Lvtton. However capable " Ouida" may be of disci ■• sing, the jbest means'^ making money out of literature, we must respectfully decline to accept her m her new role ot critic. Ina long letter to the; London Tunes she deplores the decadence of literary art, and declares that " style and evert grammar are constantly disregarded m all classes of English literature." To do Ooida justice, it must be admitted that she seldom wi-ites "'.bad j grammar." ,•;. Style '\ is ? . however, .a j matter of taste, and if the canous ol J admitted masters of compos r tion be followed, then there is no more grievous sinner than the authoress of " Under Two Flags." bhe seems unable to to wiite a noun without prefixing or adding a string of adjective?, more or less apposite ; a verb, without an equal redundancy of adverbs. Then, too, none of her men. or womeri. eyer dp anything like ordinary people. Where a man stands, her hero '* poses m a statuesque attitude ;" where a woman walks, the heroine " glides graciously." A man is always " as a Greek God," — though by the way, she qeyer specifies vyhich type, the Apollo, or the Vulcan ; —-a woman , " 1 pyely. ■as:a . sculptor's dream." But apart from her peculiarities of literary style, we must confess to finding Ouida disappointing. We do like a flavour of possibility m a work of fiction, even if wo/ are content to do without I probability. Such shackles, however, she disclaims. Her heroes and t_.eir ! surroundings are as far from the real, or (even the attainable, as are her favourite ; Olympian doilies and their belongings, and her heroines, when they are not supernatutally beautiful, simple and perfect, are equally supernaturally villainous and attractive. Her plots are either distinctly immoral, or absurdly impossible ; her incidents, few and tar between, are as the succession of pictures one sees m a nightmare. And such a writer as this dares to set herself up m judgment on the literary world 1 But the author who would grarely describe a race a& Ouida describes that in 7 the early l chapters of M Under Two Flags," would, undertake to criticise the " I'iiwyclopae lia Britannica '' and would prove to her own satisfaction that none of the contributors thereto knew what they were writing about. . Everyone knows the story of the Cambridge man who having a quarrel with an old fishwife, called her "an obtuse-angled parallelopiped," and so brought even Billingsgate -to admit his supremacy m the art of bad language. But everybody hasn't heard the story of the man who was arraigned before the Magisterial Bench at Southbridge on Saturday, on a charge of using bad language. He pleaded not guilty, and said that the witnesses were all mis*« taken. Ho had not heen using bad language, he had only been singing a Gaelic song. If he had admitted that the language was, used, hut, pleaded m extenuation tbat he had been listening to a Gaelic song, the Bench might have sympathised, and lot him off lightly, | But singing m Gaelic is about as unpleasant to the Southron ear as the worst " sweer word-. " m the language.