Literature.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2200, 14 August 1886, Page 2 (Supplement)

Literature.

;' — A FRF.HH partof tb<? Oriental oHginalt and analogue* of Chaucer's ••Canterbury Ta-iea " i 8 tjemg prepared for the Cliaocer Society by MrW. A. Clouston. —The council of the Essex Archicnlogical Society have decided to print the Admission Register of the Colchester Grammar School, which was commenced in 1637. The annotations will be entrusted to Messrs J. H. Kouod and H. \V. King. —Mr Malcolm Macmillan, who has been for some time at work upon the life and writings of Samuel Richardson, would be extremely obliged to any private possessors of letters from or to that novelist who would send transcripts to him at 29 and .'{o, Bedford-stieet, Coventgarden, or in the case of larger collections would give him some opportunity of consulting the oiigina!c — Mr James Stanley Little will become honorary secretary of the Shelley Society in succession to Mr Preston, who is unable to spare the time requisite for the duties of the office. Mr W. B. Slater will, about the same time, take the office of honorary secretary to the lirowning Society. —The report of the committee of the London Library for the past year shows a gain of 212 members, and a loss by death and withdrawal of 163. The total circulation of books during the year amounted to 110,892 volumes, an increase of 7575 on the previous year. The sum of £1,112 has been spent in books, nearly 4,000 volumes having been purchased. — An Englishmen, Mr Basil Hall Chamberlain, has been appointed lecture on the Japanese language and literature to Japanese student* in the University of Tokio. In the name institution Bunyin Manjio, who learnt Sanskrit at Oxford, ii teaching a large clas-j of Buddhist priests the elements of Sanskrit and the ancient literature of Buddhism. — If " Theosophy" could have found a home anywhere we should have supposed it would in America, where a '"Free Love" community, Shakers, and many other fanatics have from time to time flourished. But The Critic thinks ! Theosophy " must have more vitality than it ever showed in New York if it survives the recent exposures without at ll e ast hiding its head under a change of name," It pronounces the movement to oe, "under whatever name, and with whatever *kin and headgear, at all events, so far forth, a humbug." Also we read : *' Spiritualism and Theosophy — ashamed of the relationship, but still twin-sister— are bastard daughters of the same reaction" — the reaction, that is, against Materialism.