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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Authors and Books

page 157

Authors and Books.

Mr Froude has thus given his views on style: « I have never thought about style at any time of my life. I have tried merely to express what I had to say with as much simplicity and as little affectation as I could command. As a rule, when I go over what I have written I find myself striking out superfluous epithets, reducing superlatives into positives, bringing subjunctive moods into indicative, and in most instances passing my pen through every passage which had seemed while I was writing it to be particularly fine. If you sincerely desire to write nothing but what you really know or think, and to say that as clearly and as briefly as you can, style will come as a matter of course; ornament for ornament's sake is always to be avoided. There is a rhythm in prose as well as in verse, but you must trust your ear for that. »

Readers of Guy de Maupassant's stories will regret to learn that the distinguished French writer has been removed to a lunatic asylum. Maupassant is of ancient and noble Norman lineage, and was born at the Château Miromesnile in 1850. For seven years, says a contemporary, he studied the art of literature like an apprentice at an ordinary trade, and then at last, in 1880, his master, Flaubert, allowed him to make his literary début.

The Sunday Sun says: « Probably few persons are aware of the fact that the late Lord Lytton would not allow any of his novels to be illustrated. It was impossible, he said, for any artist successfully to reproduce the ideas of a novel in the shape of a picture, and the attempt should not, in his case, be made. Messrs Routledge, however, to whom the copyright of Bulwer's novels now belongs, appear to think differently. Not only have they arranged the illustrated édition de luxe, to which reference has already been made in this column, but they intend also to issue a second édition de luxe, limited to five hundred numbered copies, of 'The Last Days of Pompeii' and of 'The Pilgrims of the Rhine.' Both works lend themselves to artistic illustration. » Mr E. Tucker, of Stratford, who sends us this clipping, adds the following note: « The first edition of 'The Pilgrims of the Rhine,' published in 1833, was profusely illustrated. »

Mr Henry Irving lately unveiled the Marlowe Memorial at Canterbury, the ceremonial attracting a large gathering of the representatives of literature, art, and the drama. In the course of his remarks Mr Irving said: « It was Marlowe who first wedded the harmonies of the great organ of blank verse which peals through the centuries in the music of Shakspeare. It was Marlowe who first captured the majestic rhythms of our tongue, and whose 'mighty line' is the most resounding note in England's literature. Whatever may be thought of his qualities as a dramatist, and whatever place he may hold amongst the great writers who framed the models of English tragedy, he stands foremost and apart as the poet who gave us, with a rare measure of richness, the literary form which is the highest achievement of poetic expression. I am glad to have an opportunity of speaking as an Englishman of the claims of Marlowe's fame, to be prized and cherished by his countrymen. His reputation should be an abiding element of our national pride. »

The Unitarian Review contains the following interesting reminiscence of Lowell:—I had not known Mr Lowell at all intimately, and could not claim to be a friend, only a fellow townsman and passing acquaintance. In this way, however, one of the pleasant things to remember is the suavity and courtesy of his address if one but met him on the sidewalk. A very dear young friend was going to be married, and we wished to give her, by way of remembrance, some pleasant memorial of her Cambridge life, in the shape of the poems of Longfellow and Lowell, with the autograph of each. When (having got his consent) I called upon Mr Lowell, he expressed almost a boy's delight at seeing himself, as he said, in so much finer array than he ever did before. When I called a few days after to get my book, I found him pacing on the flags in the front of his house. « I was watching, » he said, « to see those herons—they often fly this way at night towards the river; » and then he told me of a colony of herons that had been disturbed from their old retreat near Fresh Pond, and had taken refuge in his father's pines; and of his orchard, how he would lie on the grass under the trees, where the squirrels would come about as near as they dared among the branches to have their peep at him; and how his gardener wanted to shoot those squirrels who stole his corn, and with much urgency, got his leave to keep a gun. « But I knew, » said he « that he could never hurt anything with it. » So we went into the house, where I found my volume, carefully addressed, and in it these lines, which seem to me wonderfully kind and pretty, and which I have never seen anywhere in print:—

؟Is life's best gain in what it gives? Not so:
Rather in what it teaches to forego.

M. Gounod, the composer, who is 74 years of age, has been seriously ill, though now rather better. Some months ago he had a cerebral attack which seriously affected his eyesight. He cannot read without spelling each word, and does not write at all. He looks upon his career as finished, and never hopes to write the score of another opera. M. Gounod lives very secluded with his family, seeing only his intimate friends. He feels very indignant at the attempt made to prevent the representation of Lohengrin at Paris.

Dr. J. R. Hind, the astronomer, who has presided for so many years over the preparation of that highly important volume the Nautical Almanac, is abont to retire on the termination of his period of service; and the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty have appointed Mr Arthur M. W. Downing, m.a., late scholar of Trinity College, Dublin, honorary secretary to the Royal Astronomical Society, to succeed Dr. Hind. Mr Downing has been for many years a member of the staff of the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.