Literature.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2286, 5 March 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

Literature.

The Queen lias been pleased to accept the first copy issued of Lady Burton's edition of the '"Arabian Night's." —Mr Herbert Spencer's health has improved recently. Ho is about to republish his articles in The Nineteenth Century on "The Factors of Organic Involution." —Mdlle. do la Ramee, well known to the public by the name of "Ouida," has arrived in Lwndon, and taken up her old quarters at the Langham Hotel. —Another translation from Homer may bo oxpected shortly, as Mr William Morris Ivis just finished the first instalment, proce '.ding as far as the twelfth book, of his translation of the Odyssey, which is in the metre of his " Siguard the Volsung."

—Mr Crladstono will contribute an article to the January number of the Nineteenth Gmtury. Mr John Morley, Mr Matthew Arnold, Mr .Swinburne, Dr Jessop, Lord Bratnwell, Lord Norton, Lord Brabazon, and Lady Vcrney arc among the other contributors. —The Fine Art section of the Manchester Jubilee Exhibition has received so many otfors of pictures that it is estimated the collection will be one such as the world has never seen. Over twenty collections have been placcd bodily at the eommittoos service, and many well-known collections have offered important contributions. One gentleman in Yorkshire sends works valued at £70,000. ,-A ruling of the United States Customs Department has just been made public, under which paintings executed prior to the eighteenth century are to be regarded as "Antiquities" and admitted free of_ duty. It is strange that your Yankee cousins do not see the folly of charging customs duty 011 works of art at all. —We learn from The Critic that the object of the collaboration between Mrs Qliphant and Mr T. B. Aldrich in writing a serial for the Atlantic Monthly is to secure the copyright. It will be interesting to see whether this plan will succeed. International authorship—or, at least, the •profession of it on the title-page of a book —has been tried before, but failed, because of the difficulty of proving actual collaboration. In the present case, however. The Critic states, each author will have a legitimate claim, as Mr Aldrich paid two visits to Mrs Oliphant at her home in Windsor last summer, when the plan of the story was discussed between them, and the author of " Marjorie Daw " has since written a number of passages. —The custom of " wiring" books instead of sewing the sheets together was imported, we believe, from America, and is there used almost universally. Even costly scientific treatises receive this abominable treatment.

Here it is at present used chiefly for the cheap and ephemeral literature, which perhaps it is not unsuited for. Bat bookbuyers should refuse to take copies of valuable books that have been wired. All that is necessary to avoid receiving them is to state wheti ordering copies that " wired ' ones will be refused. If the publisher declines to supply sewn copies, the buyer should order the work in sheets and have them bound up by a competent bookbinder. The extra trouble and cost will not bo wasted. It is unnecessary to explain the mischiefs arising from the use of wire; they are palpable on inspection. —Curiositv has been excited, for some

time past, regarding the new piece in preparation to succeed The Mikado at the Savoy. The Pall Mall Gazette, the other day, published an amusing cartoon, headed "The Savoy Conspirators," in which Sir A. Sullivan aud Mr W. S. Gilbert were

represented as two brigands debating in secresy the title of the new piece. This has drawn from Mr Gilbert a letter, in which he denies altogether the imputation of exaggerated anxiety, and declares: " The name of the play is at present unknown to myself, and I shall be much obliged to any one who will tell it to me." He furnishes the cast, from which it appears that the date of the play is 1810, and the scenes are, Act. 1: A Seaport Village ; Act 2 : A Baronial Hall. The characters are evidently English and not Egyptian, the only doubtful name being Zorah.