LITERARY NOTES.

Otago Witness, Issue 2896, 15 September 1909, Page 82

LITERARY NOTES.

—It is intended to publish a collection of the letters of the late Mr George Meredith, under the direct supervision of Lord Morle-y of Blackburn. — Mr Murray .has in the press a volume from the p« n of M>r Richard Edgcumbe on the- last three years of Byron's life. " The .Last Phase ' gives a detailed account of Byron in Greece, and disputes the conclusions reached in Lord Lovelace's privately printed volume ''Astart-c." —D. William Wallace has resigned the editorship cf the Glasgow Herald on account of ill-health, and the post has been accepted by Mr Harcourt Kitchin, assistant manager of The Times. Dr Wallace has been associated with the Glasgow Herald about 30 years. With the change of editorship the Glasgow Herald will become a tariff reform organ. —In Mr Arfener Butler Hulbert'e book, " The Niagara River," is a chapter on Niagara cranks, men and women, "who found in their own daring hecdleßsness a means of gaining money and a mushroom glory.' Such "'cranks" were Sam Patch, who in 1829 leapt Irom Goat Island into the river 97ft below ; Blondin who crossed the falls in 1859 on a tight rope ; Captain Matthew WeTib, who won fame by swimming from Dover to Calais, but lost his life in attempting to swim the rapids, below the falls, in 1883 ; C. D. Graham, who achieved this feat, shut up in a cask, in 1886; and Steve Brodie and Mrs A. S. Taylor, -who safely went ovei the falls, the former in 18c9, in a thickly padded indiaiubber suit, the latter m a barrel. — Miss Rosa Nouchette Carey, the writer of between 30 and 40 " domestic novels," greatly popular among girl and women read-er-> of the sort who do not crave for r-. -national ism or social problems, died at her re-.iJenc.e-, in Putney, on July 19. She published ho. - fiist novel, "Nellie's ileniono?,"' 111 18£>e, and in 1871 " Barbara Heathcoto's Tual " was published, which did nii'Ji towards establishing her reputation as a \wter of admirable books for girl*. .Sinco then she has writ ton more than 30 novels, among them being '" Not Like Other G.rk," '• Queenie's Whim" (1351), "My L^dy Fiuol ' (1559), and "Xo Friend Like a Sister" 11906). "The Angel of Forghene-* " (1907) was the last book she published. M:-s Cai-ev v.as a life-long friend of Mies Helen M. ljLun c ide, v> ho for many years past has been known as the most piolific writer in England of the graceful and touching little poems inscribed upon the Latter cl.us of ChriTima.3 and 2\ew Year cards. Miss Burn&:dc h^s beon completely •dsaf from g.rlhood, and she and her friend, Miss Carey, made their home together — Apropos of the- lady novelist, v,ho .limost dominates th-° fictior market to-day, a painstaking Hi-ieblicjator has been turning up the earlier reviews of " Jane Eyre In t.he Quarterly Review for Dec-ember, 1848. Curior Bell via? accused " chief ar.d foremost of that h.ghe-t moral offence a no\el-\Miier can commit, thai of making mi

unworthy character interesting in the eyfli of the reader." It is possible (comments the Academy) that Miss Bronto may have found consolation in the recollection of the Duke of Sussex's commentary on Satan after reading "Paradise Lost": "D n him ! I wish he'd won ! " After noticing the author's blunders in describing feminine dress the reviewer concludes his specu lations with the pairagrapih which cut Char lotte Bronte co ead'ly to the quick : "If we ascribe the book to a woman at all, we have no alternative but to asaribe it to one who has for come sufficient reason long forfeited the society of her own ccx." — The mere layman, as distinguished fronj. the professed bibliophile, must often wonde* at tiie results of the book-a-uotione., from the point of view of pure libera-ture, I S«p^ pose- fch&re can be no comparison - befaree** . - the value of the complete works of Voltaire and an uncut eet of tJie Sporfcvdg Magazine from 1732 to 1870. Yet foe other day, at Messrs Sotheby's, the magazine brought £500, while the philosopher, in 70 volumes, 1785-89, only realised £30 10s. Uncut, let it be said, does not mean untouched by the paper-knife ; that state would be technically expressed by the phrase "unopened leaves." An "uncut" book is a volume- whose margins ihave not been lessened by the we of the binder's " plough "—a tool -which book-ooUectors are reputed to anathematise every morn end eve. But it is not given to the outer world to enter into the feelings of the elect who will sometimes reverence a little book 4-in, high as 'a " tall copy." — Dickens was fond of these talkative humbugs whose words do not suggest action even to themselves. But the chief of his braggarts in emotion is not eaotly a humbug at all. "The beggared outcast, WiMtine ' Micawber,'' centainly preferred the word to tfhe- deed, but human nature shrinks from judging hi.n juvt os i* shrinks from judging Falstaff. Strip Miicawber of hie glad rhetoric, and very little will be left ; buc ■who would h-avo the heart to do it? Fo_ in him who possesses it rhetorio is a great alleviation of the crosses of life. Dickens direw the character of Micawber from his father, who led a troubled existence, tut rode the whirlwind wthen he put pen to paper. The eon was mightily amused by the father's letters, as Forster shows iii his biography : " Dickens wrote, in Deeem}>er, 18*7 : ' I have a letter from my father ' (May, 1841) ' lamenting the fine weather, invoking congenial tempests, and informing' jne that it will not be possible for him to stay more th&n another year in Devonshire, as he roust proceed to Paris to consolidate Augustus's French ' ' There has arrived," he writes from the Peschiere in September, 1844. 'a characteristic letter for Kate from my father. He dates it - Manchester, .and • says ho has reason to believe that he will be in town with the pheasants on or about ' the Ist of October.' " . . — The death is announced of Mr _J. i. - Vincent, of -Ths Times, who, it will -be I remembered, visited New Zealand with tho : Prince and Princess of Wales (then - bhe" Duke and Duchess -of Cornv*H). Truth j says : '" It is very cad to read of pre- ~ mature death of M«- J E. Vincent, -of-, Th*» Times. Mr Vincent was an able journalist, -and a man of very charming character. BF oarr-e up from Christ Qhureh to the Tempfe j in the ear.ly eighties, but quickly driftedfrom the Bar- into journalism, though he '■ obtained, and held till hie death, the dignij fk<! appointment of - Chancellor of 'he I Diocese of Bangor. He worked for The Times from Ihe first, and for many yearn u«>d to represent <ih*j- paper at almost every important public ev-eni or function. H managed to shin<» as a descriptive reporte. without cea*insf to write like a gentleman and a man of education. His most brillian 1 : work was done as Thn Times' corroispoudent during the tour of ths Prince of Wales round the Empire, when he was privileged to occupy a berth in the Ophir. For a tim» be edited the National Observer and Country Lif<\ L-esides producing one or two vvrv readable books, but his connection wi'h The Times was maintained to the end of his life although during the last few yearn he Jived very much in the country. He was a 'good sportsman,' a • man who intor«s*ed himself in many questiono, and one who made friends wherever he went." — Herr Karl Bloibtreu has written a volume. " Germany and England," with the laudable aim of making the two countries understand one another better than they do. He take? a very different view of. England from that held by the Anglophobista of Germany. A review in The Times says: "He tells his countrymen plaialy that tihey are under a dangerous delusion if they imagine- that England can be made little of in any sphere, intellectual or material. Germans are apt to excuse the lateness, &s - they think it, of their development in power and civilisation by a series of misfortune! — the Thirty Years' war, and so forth. 'If Germany allowed itseif to be depressed by such circumstances while England, under the most difficult conditions., struggled fatigably upwards — an extraordinary achievement for a nation originally owning but one-eighth tihe population of Germany — what can this denote but a great intellectual, moral and physical superiority? Has any German ever had a tru^ conception of the bitter toil which it has cost to bring the British world-power to its bloom? Good h\ek?- A nation of three millions under Cromwell, of ten millions at the time of Napoleon, ventured on a war to th© kni^e with the Corsican giant, who controlled in France alone a force of 40 millions, and had 40 millions more ?s bis obedient vassals ir Europe.'" Horr Blaib f r9u goes on to say that " not only on sea. buh relatively to hii n~<?ds, on land as well. England is stronger and hotter equipped that! ever I^-efore " With regard to her intellectual and spii itual r'evrloprrwit, he shows that far from b'ino: a naiion of nnpoot'c materiali'.-ts, tho striking- thing about rhe English is the artistic turn the «>nf<» of form, whirb marks th<=ir literary wevrk. "Even th'? wellknow n military hi-tory, Napier's T lTistory of the Pminmlar War,' reads so eloquent^ is pervaded \v ; th =uch a veritable breath of, poetry, that no similar German ox French. work can be compared with it. And herein. lios the incredibly comic side of the «}te£; national lpsrend which pictures the Briti^ a? essentially a people of dry and! cold i» t-ellitrenco, practical, but altogether unpoetic. Li* tie as they resemble a 'nationi of shopkeepers,' but "rather at all times a politic and warlike folk of the Romart stamp, yftt there is implanted in them n •nofablo 'artistic impu!=e which a certain, lof tino^s of =pirit ever tends to turn inward', to t^e things of the soul— in a word, to poetry."