LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2813, 12 February 1908, Page 81

LITERARY NOTES.

— Casting about for a new, idea to «mbroidei with irreverences and high spirits, the authors of "Wisdom While you Wait" have hit upon a novel means oi: whipping the present, so to speak, on the back of the past. "Hustled History," their forthcoming book, takes a dozen lead'ng episodes in the history of the world, such as the Flood, the Siege of Troy, and the Norman Conquest, and applies to these .exploitations all the fervid journalistic methods, of the present moment — interviews, special articles, stop press news, advertisements. It is all in the spirit of wild burlesque and irresponsibility, but there is a moral too.

— Many people find history more engrossing than fiction. They like to exercise their imagination in peopling a real world with real characters, though they be of the past. To effectively conjure up scenes in thu live-, of our forefathers and to indulge in fancies as to what this or that historical character would have done with, say, tariff leform it is essential to have a good knowledge ot his life and' the times in which he livtd, and of the period when many of the problems that still occupy us came into conscious recognition, and were dealt with in ways thar are '-eadily intelligible. "The Cambridge Mocler.i History," compiled after Lord Acton's original scheme (sayb a writer in T.P.s Weekly), is a work that is better than fiction, that is more interesting than fiction, and that adds to our knowledge, and to be ignorant to-day is a mark of illbreeding This book is a general history of Euiope and her colonies, and of America from the Middle Ages up to the pre&Biir, and embraces that part of the. world's history which is of *he highest value

— "The annual report of the Imperial Library of Japan contains some statistics winch cannot but be of interest in connection with the growth and development of tl.e Mikado's Empire," says the Lou lon tor respondent of the Birmingham Daily Post. '"It is, for instance, significant fhnt books on mathematics, 'cience, and medicine wore more in demand during the year ended March 31 last than any other class of books, works on literature and language forming a good third on the JJSt. There woukl seem to be also a good demand' for books> on history, travels, and geography, while there is evidence that works on theolog\ and religion are in very' 6mall lequosl. not more than 1.7 per cent, of the books asked for being on those two subjects. The total number of books in rhe Imperial Library when the count was last made, on March 31 of this year, was 244,483, of which 194,500 were Japanese and Chinese books."

— "Xot long ago one of our contemporaries was kind enough to warn ue that our good friends the publishers would take a violent dislike to us if we— well, told the truth about their books. We repudiatea the suggestion then and the repudiate it now," say 3 the Academy (December 14). "We have never suspected publishers of i being so stupid or so dishonest as to hope that the reviews of books in the Academy would be in. any way influenced by the extent of the advertisements in the Academy of the publishers of those books. But there are exceptions to every rule, and one publisher has been found to have the supreme impudence to send us a message to the effect that if we did 1 not alter our views on religion he would not advertise in our coloumns. Thie is not only impudence, but it is a form of blackmail, and weresent and despise it accordingly. We shall not at present mention the name of the offending firm, but our readers will perhaps be able to arrive at it in course of time by a process of elimination, for in future no books published by that firm will be | noticed in these columns." The Academy has of late had some severe articles on Nonconformity. — Some interesting particulars are gfven in the London press of the Frenchmen who have been chosen for the Nobel prizes.^ M. Louis Renault, who shares with Sfgnof Moneta the peace prizes, is president of the Law Faculty in Paris, and a worldlenowned professor of international law. He is a jurisconsult at the French Foreign Office, and his role at the Hague Conference is well known. His main work is a treatise on commercial law, written in association with M. Lyon Caen, and crowned by the institute. In 1892 he was the arbiter chosen by Germany, England, "and France to settle the difference between those powers and Japan on the taxes on land and buildings conceded by the Japanese Government. Dr

Laveran, who has received the prize f<V* medicine, is member of the Academy <t\ Sciences and the Academy of Medicinij, and now attached to the Pasteur InstjtuuV He is celebrated for his discovery^ of tb\ infectious agents in intermittent fe'teJA, Dr Laveran's discovery was completed bb v \ the labours of British investigators in caw nection with malarial fevers. He- -is (^ specialist in the study of the protozoa. oj the blood. His work on paludism is classiO Afr.fr Pasteur and Koch he is one of th\> most eminent bacteriologists Europe had produced — I am one of those who do not remenvber all or more than a small part of whai I havo read, and I have found myself, foa> instance, hopelessly entangled in a discus sion which began by my asserting- thaS "The Virginians" was of Thackeray's basS work, and ther finding that I had so corse pl.etely forgotten the book that I must hay« seemed a detected fraud. It may be vers* pleasant to remember what one reads with miscroscopio clearness, and it is certainly, a useful gift of memory. Yet there is something to be said on the other side. For the more sieve-like mind * absorbs the impression of a book, and all that is valuable in it passes into the small store of one's knowledge, whilst the book itself is soon so far forgotten as to leave much of its pleasure- to be enjoyed again. And to rev read, say, "Redgauntlet" with the dimly, remembered characters and incidents coming back to one is to add to its ordinary delight that, strange pleasure which comes when one hemisphere of the brain works in advance of the other, and one has "known all this before." — Guy 0. Pollock, in the Evening Standawv

— The professional novelist should be very wary of challenging fortune with a shorfs story, for the conte is a terrible revealer of limitations, \vitn no sense of form, innocent even of a desire for style, • powerless to create an atmosphere, ignorant of the very elements of suggestion, a roan may contrive a triumph by a sheer voluminousness of observation if he only have spaeo enough ir> which to spread himself out. We forgive him all his faults, we may even find jii them a sort of Tirtue, if he provides that illusion of reality, that personal interest in the supposed which is at the greater part of the appeal of fiction. Butf in the short story a man must abandon! all the substitutes for art which may as a novelist Eave made him successful. __ He stands revealed for just what _he ,is— a mere compiler and, possibly, an indifferent one. For in the short story nothing ' but art can avail anything: there is no space in which to manipulate illusions: the sens» of reality, the poignancy of the Situation, must entirely depend on the instant establishment of an artistic understanding between the relater wnd the reader ; and in that relationship the mere fact acquires a new value, it counts less for what "" it does» than what it means. This inversion o£ values may be -well observed in one particular. The novel mostly works up to a climax, the short story away from it.-— Saturday Review. —In 1841, about the middle of •Tult,there appeared a new comic journal, to be published weekly, with illustrations. Iti came out without much previous advert isinar. and it was in the hands of a Bmall group of humorists and artists. Its name was Punch. There had never been anything: like it before, and there have only been; imitation 51 since. "We can hardly eFfimatfl now, when we are so used to Punch, tho effect h<j had on his first- appearance. In those far from arood old 1 days it was thoueht that a comic journal could not dossjbly" be funny without being coarse. Tho French paper which gave the idea of Punch was not the kind of thing that anynice dentist would leave in his waiting room. Therefore, everyone was surprised!/ and delighted to find that the voungrter wns both amusing and decent. NevertheJess. he came near death in the following December, for want of funds, and would 1 have certainly succumbed, as it were, to distemper but for his Almanac for 1812. This appeared at Christmas time, and contained a joke for every day, besides many illustrations and margins full of tiny silhouetted figures illustrating the iokps. I* is declared that it was written by H. P.. Grattan and Henry Mayhew in the Fleet Prison, but this story is not unchallenged.! If it be true, however, we" can understand why so' many of the jokes turn on th« scarcity of money, writs, duns, and bailiffs! In one week the circulation of Punch leapt from 600 to 90,000, and there it staved until it began to mount again, as it hat done during 66 years. — Girls' Realm.

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