The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY. LEVIN. WEDNESDAY. JULY 21, 1915

Horowhenua Chronicle, 21 July 1915, Page 2

The Chronicle PUBLISHED DAILY. LEVIN. WEDNESDAY. JULY 21, 1915

NEGLECTED NOVELISTS.

Every month in all the years a thousand publishing houses ol dreat Britain iiiul America pill forth in m'illions the ephemeral ware of high-pressure novelists; and l'rom New York to Caithness, from 'Frisco to Kumara. myriads of novel readers plunge into the literary tea in manner recalling the headlong rush of certain unclean ' animals at Gadarcne in days when the cheap novel was not." Such books ;ns Mary O'Kelly's "Lachrymose Tempter" must be caught and bolted ere the ink bo dry; and the clatter of silver coin on j.lie bookseller's counter is insistent and linueasing. Here and there comes at long interval:* an "Eben Holden.'' a "David Harum," or a "Light that Failed'' to make more noticeable the general waste of good ink and paper, burdened with cargo for oblivion But still the rush continues; ever tliero is the same desire for "something new," the blind grasping for the intangible. To meet the demand America has evolved a new style of literature—a strange, inconsequential, plotless narrative that moves to its goal in. joyous "rag-time," and piles inciuents on adventure in more or less successful endeavour to cover the deficiencies of reasoning. Though most el this- light literature is made to hurried order in the slipshod manner characteristic of most '"'rush jobs" there is. nevertheless, a great deal of commendation due to the brightness of dialogue, the fidelity of emotion, and the clear-cut, rough-edged pourtrayals of quaint human types which give efleet and vim to the latter-day American novels. And Great Britain has her cloud of literary locusts too. devouring miles ol "copy-paper" ■with fair result of pelf and but little, hope of after tame. Byron's truism that "post obits very rarely reach a poet" has had in remembrance by the latter-clay novelists, and though they care little for the present fame that Byron had in reference when he wrote the ■* Mne they act in its spirit and strive sedulously to pile up pleasant silver pieces, counting sure present, wealth better than possible future renown. Marie Corolli. Conan Doyle, the liockings. Edna Lyall, J. M. Barrio, Barry Pain, are all excellently-bad illustrations; and of dead and half-forgotten exemplars account must be made of 'Mrs Henry Woods, memorised by oceans of sym-pathy-tears drawn out by pleasant pictures of the never-was and harrowing details of the scarcely-could-be. But save Kipling, there is probably not ore writer of the last two decades whose names will be decipherable next eentuiy—and Kipling's fame, it may well be, will by that time be "greatly ■weather-worn. .

Yet the fact remains that tliiis weekly outpouring of works continues in unabated popularity, and that hv this predilection of t-ho public sundry legions of scribblers arc enabled to earn fat livings and acquire pedigree racehorses, bull pups, Eastern 'bric-n-brao, or such other articles as their fancies incline to. Incidentally, • tie's easy achievement of wealth gives chance for the writing of something ensuring for

posterity's benefit and judgment; but, alas, there ii> no sign yet of .the magnum opus. It is certainly well and commendable that the public should buy literature of any sort—for the mail who reads only the Buccaneer Bob series is of reason on a higher plane than he who reads nothing and thinks in a corresponding ratio.

let the thought is evoked, what of the old masters? what of the literary giants who graced the English literature of the' last century? What of Thackeray, who gripped men hard by their hearts, or held women in equal thrall through 'their emotions, alike wiTaiig'slaves to the charm of his genius? And in a lesser degree, but appealing k> a wider circle, there is Dickens. liven Bulwer Lytton, with his mawkish sentiments and absurd situations, is a writer of great, parts when compared, with somo present-day authors who are read b,v thousands upon thousands of the easily-satisfied public. "Oh! they are are <jood enough in their way." says some superficial critic, "but too.prolix lor the times; wo want something crisp and snappy in these days— something to stir our blood and fire our emotions for ten minutes and then leave us free to resume our hustle after the cupturablo half-crown and the elusive sovereign 1" For such the later novelist and his works are perhaps well enough; but for guidance of the unthinking and the unknowing it may be well to set out the merits of some of the older novelists that entitle their works to more frequent perusal by the general public. 'Iliackeray and Dickens still have their readers by tens of thousands, but there are other writers of only comparatively secondary merit who, in the hustle and bustlu of modern times, have been relocated t'i semi-ob'sgurity that is by no means their dessert.

01' those, it prominent caw is that of George Eliot, tliat tense, liard-faccd, emotional-natured aii'thor who was cursed by the incongruous union of tho iniiid of a man and the heart of a true woman. If .some young reader, surleitiyl with the jindonsoquentiail. jolting and unconvincing tstorio.s of the average modern novelist will begin \ oourse of George Eliot's works he will liud himself in the track of a psycliological problem that lie may .solve according to his liking from evidences to Ik; deduced from the books themselves, though in no instance, save one, do the problems obtrude. In "Tho Mill 011 the Floss," which the writer" of this article believes to be George Eliot's finest book, there is given a .splendid characterisation of the author's strange childhood, ■with glimpses here and there ol the repressed emotions and curbed affections that tended in .so large a measure to make her lifu the strange and sorrowful concatenation of untoward events that it was. But in "Maggie Tulliver," the maid of the mill, there i.s an idealised .setting forth ol the author's predilections and trials. In I'elix .Holt, the Kadical" there i>s I'limed a character. 0110 "Mrs Trou.vome." "wherein is pourtrayed much that sheds light on George Idiot's ways and whiiiis. though the character is sharply distinguished from what the author really was. Altogether, it is a most interesting study, this piecing together trom George Eliot's works of a complex yet impalpable character which stands lor much that this interesting and unfortunate author was. *»nd the stories she tells are replete with interest: Adam Bode, Silas Earlier. Mix Holt, the .Mill 011 the Floss, or tho ten others - all give good reward for a careful perusal and arouse in the reader a feeling that here is Ihe work o! a kindly heart and a mind well-balanced—the work, in

short, of a wo in ;i 11 who had she boon born with fewer brains or in a more congenial circle ■would have Jed a far happier iile a* inotlier and mate and in doing"so would have deprived posterity of a valuable legacy.