The Reviewer.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 227, 22 January 1876, Page 7

The Reviewer.

BOOKS RECEIVED. The Yew Zealand Magazine. A Quarterly Journal of General Literature. No. I. Printed at the Daily Times Office, Rattray-street, Dunedin. The Melbourne Review. No. 1. Published by Samuel Mullen, 55 and 57 Collins-street, East Melbourne. Tempest Tossed. A Romance. By Theodore Tilton. Published by George Robertson, Melbourne. The first and second of the above publications may receive appropriately conjoint notice. It would be possible to put that notice into very few and very truthful words by saying that the first is the product of conceit, the second of culture. The idea which gave origin to both publications may have been the same ; the results of that idea, now before us, are widely different. The idea was evidently the production of a journal which should give publication to thoughtfully written articles upon subjects of interest, and should so command the support of all who cared to read such articles. Now the writers in the “ New Zealand Magazine ” have evidently forgotten that their proper object in writing should have been to interest, for instead of either giving us something original, or at least giving us something which, if not original in conception, might become interesting through a local application, they have contented themselves with producing a series of papers on matters which the readers of any high class Home reviews will find treated of ad nauseam. Thishas arisen, apparently, from an intense egotism possessing each writer, which caused him to think that it was impossible anyone in New Zealand could have read the books he had read, and hence in writing he simply produced a rechauffage of some work or article or essay, which would be very pleasant reading indeed, only that acquaintance with the original destroys, all interest in it. The very titles of the articles in the “ New Zealand Magazine ” indicate the facts we have stated. We .find “Darwinotheology,” “ Evolutionist Ethics,” “ The Problem of Poverty,” and “ Specialisation in Government.” The last-named of these is indeed treated in its application to the New Zealand political question of abolition, but it is none the less a mere hash-up of Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, and like writers, as the others are reproductions of recent writers in England and on the Continent. Indeed, it is not too much to say of, the gentlemen who amongst them contribute to make up the “New Zealand Magazine” that castrant alios, lit libros suos, per se graciles, alieno adipe suffarciant. Before the first number of the magazine appeared we found a couple of hysterical notices of it in the Otago Daily Times, written from a perusal of the proof-sheets, which in quite a frenzied style of eulogy enlarged on the literary delights in store for New Zealand. These notices we can only charitably ascribe to the ignorance of the Daily Times', for we should be cruel if we suggested that they had any connection with the fact that the magazine is printed at the Daily Times office. In pleasing contrast to the “New Zealand Magazine” is the “Melbourne Review.” The writers in this latter have written because, being men of education and of that highest culture which come from a knowledge of their fellowmen, they have felt that they had some things interesting to tell, and have told them most excellently. In this they completely differ from their New Zealand brethren, who really appear to have written rather because they wanted to write than because they had anything to write about. The first paper in the “ Melbourne Review,” “ On the Relation of the State to Religious and Ecclesiastical Bodies in Victoria,” is an admirable essay upon the proper relations which should exist between Church and State in the colonies, and is quite capable of extension in its views to the position of the mother country. “ History and Geography” is a manly appeal against the system of “cram” which produces youths stuffed to pass an examination and utterly unprepared to think on any subject. “ An Episode in Californian Banking” is an interesting resume of the recent crisis in the affairs of the Bank of California.; and “ Brain Waves”

is a fair personal statement upon a much discussed phenomenon of spiritualism. These are not the only articles, the review containing eleven in all, every one of which is that pleasantest of all reading—reading from which one rises with the comfort that he has been for half an hour in converse the thoughts of a thinking man, not struggling through the plagiarisms of a conceited prig.. We may mention, in conclusion, that the “New Zealand Magazine” contains some translations from Horace, Juvenal, and Catullus lather below the average work of an average sixth form boy, but still serving the purpose, it is to be presumed, which the writer intended, of showing that the writer had read Horace, Juvenal, and Catullus. “ Tempest Tossed” may have been intended by Mr. Theodore Tilton as an outcome of the Beecher scandal, but we take leave at present to doubt. The book, apart from any meritsitmay possess, has a selling value because its ■writer’s name is intimately associated with the Beecher scandal, and of this doubtless both writer and publisher are well aware and take advantage. But the book has merits which should make it sell apart from this. As described in the prospectus, the events take place chiefly on. board of a ship, the. Coromandel, which sailed from Boston in 1847 bound, when we first see her, for the Cape of Good Hope with a cargo of preserved provisions for the South Atlantic whaling fleets. The Coromandel, when within a few days’ sail of Cape Town, is struck by lightning and set on fire, and is deserted by her captain and crew, leaving behind them Rodney Vail, a passenger, who refuses to leave the bedside of his sick wife. A heavy rain-storm puts out the fire, which has destroyed the rigging and masts, leaving the hull uninjured, and the Vails find themselves miraculously saved. With them is an old colored nurse, the captain’s dog, and afterwards a little daughter, Barbara Vail, the real heroine of the book, who was born during the storm. The story is then devoted to showingthe growth of Barbara from childhood to womanhood during the sixteen years that she and her parents are tempest tossed in the vessel, and during some subsequent time spent on an island in the Carribean Sea. Barbara, of course, feels dawnings of love for some male affinity, and in due time the male affinity appears. Whilst the book contains a great deal that is extravagant, and not a little that is ridiculous, its author writes with some power, has the ability to paint in words very nicely, and on. the whole has turned out a novel quite as good as the general run of books that crowd the shelves of circulating libraries. Messrs. Lyon, and Blair, Lambton-quay, are the local agents for the book.

A SUPPOSED RELIC OF DICKENS The Academy publishes the following among its literary notes :—“ Among the latest minor acquisitions of the Bodleian Library is a small pamphlet quite forgotten in our days, and mentioned neither in catalogues nor in biographical books, with the title ‘ Sunday under Three Heads—as it is ; as Sabbath Bills would make it ; as it might be made.’ By Timothy Sparks. (London : Chapman and Hall, 186*, Strand. 1836.) A bibliophile has written in. pencil on the title page ‘ (Chas. Dickens) !’ The four illustrations are signed ‘H.K.B.,’ (Hablot Knight Browne), the illustrator of * Fickwick.’ The style has, no doubt, resemblances to that of Dickfens. For instance, p. 11 :—‘Look at the group of children who surround that working-man who has ju§t emerged from the baker’s shop at the comer of the street with the reeking dish, in which a diminutive joint of mutton simmers above a vast heap of half-browned potatoes. How the young rogues clap their hands and dance round their father, for very joy at the prospect of the feast, and how anxiously the youngest and chubbiest of the lot lingers on tiptoe by his side, trying to get a peep into the interior of the dish. They turn up the street, and the chubby-faced boy trots on as fast as his little legs will carry him, to herald the approach of the dinner to mother, who is standing with a baby in her arms on the door-step, and who seems almost as pleased with the whole scene as the children themselves. Whereupon baby, not precisely understanding the importance of the business in hand, but clearly perceiving that it is something unusually lively, kicks and crows most lustily, to the unspeakable delight of all the children and both the parents.’ Oil page 13 :—‘You may tell a young woman in the employment of a large dressmaker at any time by a certain neatness of cheap finery and humble following _of fashion which pervade her whole attire ; but, unfortunately, there are other tokens not to be misunderstood —the pale face with its hecti* bloom, the slight distortion of form which no artifice of dress can wholly conceal, the unhealthy stoop, and the short cough—the effects of hard work and close application to a sedentary employment upon a tender frame.’ On page 21 : —‘ The idea of making a man truly moral through the ministry of constables, and sincerely religious under the influence of penalties, is worthy of the mind which could form such a mass of monstrous absurdity as this bill is composed of.’ Finally, on page 39 :— £ I was travelling in the West of England a summer or two back, and was induced by the beauty of the scenery,’ &c. Dickens was indeed in 1835 in Bristol and Bath (see Forster’s ‘ Life of Charles ninth edition, vol. i., p. 8). If those coincidences induced the owner of the book to attribute it to Dickens, could we not oppose the strong evidence of Forster’s silence on the subject ? Perhaps some of our correspondents may know something about the name of the noni deplume, T. Sparks.”