LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2810, 22 January 1908, Page 94

LITERARY NOTES.

' — "Immortal Memories" is the title given by Mr Clement Shorter to a set ot addvesaes on Johnson, Cowper, George Bor- ' row, and other literary worthies, concluding with "Lord Acton and the Hundred Beet Books." It is published by Messre Hodder and Stoughton. It is an undoubted fact that several "novels" of this year (1907) have been a disgrace to authors, publishers, and public taste. - • By all means— since our police powers oi- energies seem insufficient to put a check on it— let us have a censor .of novels ! When we have our committee for the censorship of plays, let fiction be included in their purview.— Evening Standard. Mr Gharles Welsh is the compiler of a book relating to Dickens, which MesSTB Chatto announce. It is called "Character Portraits from Dickens," and from that title the nature' of its contents may be gathered. Dickens, Mr Welsh points out, bad a peculiar genius for making strange characters, living in a strange atmosphere in the past, familiar to his readers. This book is an anthology of the studies of these characters. - YSTe hear a great deal about the rubbish that is read to-day. It is the natural result of the rubbish that is talked. A vast number of people know better how to learn from the epoken word than from books. It is only persons of considerable literary attainment — and -they do not comprise a hundredth part of the reading public — who can form a correct judgment of the character of a book. They read what it says ; they do not know on what authority it says it. The truth ie that reading is, comparatively speaking, a new art. We have been accustomed to receiving nformation. orally since the days of Adam. —Spectator. A new volume in Unwm s Colonial Library is "The Spanish Prisoner," by Mrg Philip Champion de Crespigny, author of "The Mystery of a Glove," "The. Grey Domino," etc. The scene of the romance is laid in Spain, among the mountains of Navarra, with an inferlude in England. The date is 1805, and the Battle of Trafalgar olays a minor part in the story. lhe heroine, Paloma, is a Spanish girl, who, to free her cousin's name from dishonour, personates him in England. After being tricked into a promise of marriage by a Spaniard she dislikes, she discovers that he gained his end by a mean subterfuge, j and considering hereelf no longer bound ' to him, marries the man of her heart, an Englishman, who comes over from England to claim her. , . , „ — "4.dam Smith and Modern Sociology is the title of a book by Professor Albion W Small, head of the Department ot 1 Sociology in the Umverity of Chicago. The main argument r of the book is that modern sociology is virfuaily an attempt to take ' up the larger programme of social analysis and interpretation which was implicit in 4-dam Smith's moral philosophy, but which was suppressed for a century by prevaili in" interest in the technique of the production of wealth. It is both a plea for revision of the methods of the social sciences, and a symptom of the reconstruction that is already in progress, and will 1 have to be considered by thinkers who are interested in any phase of social theory. Mr Fisher Unwin is the publisher. — Foolish, wrong-headed, sentimental in the wrong way, right-headed at the wrong moment, Ru6kin invented near'y every delightful thought in the latter half of the nineteenth century. His teaching, or oppo sition to his teaching, produced everything we value most, exclusive of science. He rescued England from a slough of hideous commei-cialism. He converted good people into having good taste and bad people into having good manners. He brought Nature into the perspective of modern life, and Art into the perspective of the modern Soul. He endowed both with a psychology, in a way that even Wordsworth never succeeded in doing. He wrought a- style in prose which no Englishman has ever surpassed. Art critics tell us he was wrong in his views about old pictures. He was, often. But he taught us to look at them. Modern artists say he knew nothing of modern painting. For that we may envy him. — Academy. It i e sfcranpro kow often poverty a£Ld poetry go hand in hand. A short time back some particulars were given of the bitter struggle wihich GeraVl Massey had with poverty, and an even more poignant story is that concerning the career of Mr France Thompson, an English lyrical poet of rare distinction, who has fust died. # llr Thompson was the son of a Lancashire physician, whose calling he was to have followed. But a love of literature brought him to London to earn a living with his pen. No ' one, however, wanted his poems, and for years he lived in direst poverty, suffering a'l the horrors of jihyaical destitution. At one time he sold matches in the Strand, called cabs for ha'pence, and came very near to self-destruction. He lived in lodging-houses of the poorest kind, h;6 life being one of constant want and misery. And vet he triumphed in the end. In 1893 he Dublished

his first volume of poems, ancl these led to him being hailed as a great lyrical poet, and secured for him the friendship of many distinguished men. The struggle, however, left ite mark on the poet's constitution, which had never been particularly robust, and he became a frail and sickly man, to whom death must have been a happy release. — Seventy-five years of Chambers's Journal have been completed, and in the Christmas Number for 1907 the editor has some interesting things to say of his magazine. "We recognise in it a living stream of instruction and entertainment which has flowed for three-quarters of a century; has refreshed, stimulated, and inspired its millions of readers; and ie still flowing Vith scarcely diminished volume. Only one surviving periodical has an equal record. . In the exei-cise of what William Chambers has called the 'winnowing machine much golden grain has been separated from the vast amount of chaff which inevitably floats towards every editorial sanctum. In this process it is a fsct that early work of afterwards distinguished writers has been retained, such as George Meredith's 'Chillianwallah.' printed July 7, 1849; Thomas Hardy's 'How I Bui't Myself a House,' March" 18, 1865 ; and Sir A. Connn Doyle's 'Mystery of Sassasa Valley,' in 1879. It is also pleasant to think that Hugh Miller, Mary Russell Mitford, David Masson, the author of 'John Halifax, Gentleman,' G. Manville Fenn, T. W. Speight, W. W. Jacobs, Stanley Weyman, and Sir T. Wemyss Reid were , contributors, amongst thousands of others. Amongst the novelists have been James Payn, Mayne Reid, Christie Murray, Baring-Gould, Sir Walter Besant, Mrs Oliphant, Grant Allen, K. W. Hormingr; Mary Stuart Boyd, John Bueiian, and John. Oxenham."