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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Authors and Books

page 97

Authors and Books.

Men of the Time » has gained so wide a reputation that it is unnecessary to dilate upon its value. It has long been recognized as an indispensable part of a journalist's library. The new edition, just published, is printed on a larger page and is in all respects a much larger book than any previous issue, exceeding a thousand pages. The addition to the title, which now reads « Men and Women of the Time, » is, we think, a mistake, and we are surprised at a distinguished grammarian like the editor, Mr G. Washington Moon, thinking such a change necessary or even judicious. It is a cardinal defect of the English tongue that the important word « man » is ambiguous; but the context generally prevents any misunderstanding, and in a case like this, no rational man would suppose the term to be used in relation to sex. From the preface we find that the present edition— the thirteenth—centains 744 additional memoirs, the total number being 2450. 370 biographies in the last edition have been dropped out, owing to the decease of the subjects, and 25 names are noted as those of celebrities who have died after the sheets containing their names were printed. To these about twenty-five more might already be added. That the edition is brought well down to date may be judged from the fact of Olive Schreiner and Rudyard Kipling being included. Among New Zealand celebrities we note the names of Sir G. Grey, Sir W. Buller, and the Rev. W. Colenso: the memoir of the latter being copied, slightly abridged, from Typo of April, 1890. The modesty of the learned editor is such that his own name does not appear, which is to be regretted, when so many much smaller fry in the literary world are included. The valuable appendix, containing dates of birth and death of departed celebrities, and reference to the edition in which their names last appeared, begins with the fifth edition. With no very great trouble, and with great advantage to those who use the volume, it might be extended to cover the whole work from the first edition.

Tennyson's latest lyric, and one of his most characteristic, appears in the March number of the New Review. It is full of music, and is one more example confirming Shelley's dictum, « Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought. »

A Song.
To sleep, to sleep, the long bright day is done,
And darkness rises from the fallen sun,
To sleep! To sleep!

Whate'er thy joys, they vanish with the day—
"Whate'er thy griefs, in sleep they fade away.
To sleep! To sleep!

Sleep, mournful heart, and let the past be past.
Sleep, happy soul, all life will sleep at last.
To sleep! To sleep!

Dr. O. W. Holmes having been incautious enough to invite a gentleman with whom he had been corresponding to visit him, the visitor has supplied the New York Star with two columns in the approved « interviewer » style. Some of it is worth reading, and we make one or two extracts:—After a pause I ventured to ask the Doctor which of his poems he valued the most highly. « I think much of 'The Chambered Nautilus,' which is also my most finished poem. But then I am also partial to ' The Voiceless,' and ' My Aviary,' 'The Silent Melody,' and 'The Last Leaf,' which Poe liked very much. » « Has 'The Chambered Nautilus' any history connected with it? » I asked. « None whatever. » « But 'The One-hoss Shay'—that has a history, has it not? » — « No, it was merely a random fancy of mine, such as often comes to me, and in this particular instance I made use of it. » « How came you to write 'The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table?' » I inquired. « It was soon after the Atlantic Monthly came into existence, and Mr Lowell had been selected as the editor, that he came to me one day and asked if I would contribute a series of articles to the magazine on some subject of my own selection. I consented to do so, and the 'Autocrat' papers were the outgrowth of the contributions in question. They had very much to do in making the magazine successful, and gained for me a good deal of popularity. In fact the 'Autocrat' has always been a source of profit to both publishers and myself. » …. « Do you think that the present demand for light fiction on the part of the public is to be permanent? » « No. The people will become surfeited after a time, and will want a change. There may be a return to poetry; it is not improbable, I think.

Poetry at present would not be supplanted by fiction, as it is, if the right kind of the former were given to the world. In my opinion, most persons to-day would enjoy poetry as much as they ever did, but it must be under the old conditions. The trouble is, the most of the poetry which is offered to the world is entirely artificial and does not satisfy. To all young writers of verse and song I would say, if you would reach the ears of the people, sing from the heart and you will be heard gladly. » « Are not most writers disposed to write too much, doctor, and is not this a failing even with those who have the greatest reputation? » « No doubt your criticism is a just one. Take the case of Hood. His fame rests almost wholly on much less than a dozen poems, yet the number which he wrote is very large. I think Burns himself overdid the matter. The trouble is with writers, especially after reaching a certain point, they unconsciously write drivel. » « But no one has ever had cause to complain of you on this ground. » « Well, I have sought to be careful. However, with the best of us, we shall be remembered by only very few things, and those, perhaps, the ones we reckoned least on. Among my own poems I rather think that such lyrics as 'Old Ironsides,' 'My Aviary,' and 'Dorothy Q.' will live as long as any. »

The ubiquitous American interviewer has hunted up George Meredith in the Surrey village where he abides, and has given the world his impressions:—He sits down and talks, without intermission and steadily, with a marvellous command of happily apt language, and a variety of thought that amazes and stimulates you. You listen appreciatively, for he requires no encouragement except the feeling that he has a receptive listener, and the words come in orderly array without confusion, throwing rainbow scintillations on all subjects they touch; illuminating such diverse topics as the American copyright question and the character-marks of the English intellect. So effortless seems the flow, so spontaneously issue the epigrammatic sentences, that you are rested as much as you are enthralled by the monologue, and how fervently you wish for his own sake as well as your own, that he would write more as he talks, that the strange and apparent intricacy of style and expression in which he is wont to indulge in his books were abandoned in favor of his talking language. You learn from him afterwards, however, that he is a conscious sinner, and that intricate thoughts find, in his opinion, their equivalent expression in intricate style. You are too modest to argue the point, but you suggest, perhaps, in a tentative sort of way, that you prefer the vehicle crystal clear, in order that you may attack the thought itself, and that it is something like deliberately setting a puzzle to wrap a bit of wisdom in voluminous foldings of words. But your host tells you the more brilliant your diamond, the more elaborate the setting; that an idea worth acquiring is worth digging for, and that sentences may be the most interesting for what they do not say. All this you tacitly admit, but question whether it proves the case. … He tells you how fond he is of young people, and how as a rule he prefers the society of the young to that of the old; but most of all you think he prefers his own society, for you can see at times that his imagination has carried him off to some unseen world, and that for the moment he is living in a planet that is all his own. He tells you how he likes to meet a young and brilliant woman not more than once or twice, and how his imagination builds up the hint that he caught from nature and art. He hints how a first delightful impression may be spoiled by a nearer acquaintance, but that a child of the imagination never disappoints: and you gather from this and similar remarks an impression of a certain sense of detachment on the author's part—an aloofness from the world that allows it and its denizens to come just so near and no nearer. You remember how strong was this characteristic in Browning, and are struck with this point of resemblance between the two men…. « Nations, » he says, « have an individuality and their people salient characteristics. You tell me I am going to meet an Irishman or a Frenchman. I know I shall find certain traits, product of the finer nervous organization that comes from the Celtic blood. The Americans, too, have a finer set of nerves and a more refined apprehension than we. There lies their hope. Their organization is more keen than ours. I discern it in some of their writings and in some of their methods. I foresee a great literary and artistic product there. »

The following anecdote of Artemus Ward, narrrated in the North American Review by the late J. W. Watson, has been revived in the American press: The publishers empowered me to correspond with Artemus and offer him $30 per week and travelling expenses to come to New York as the new editor. The response was immediate acceptance, and $25 and two weeks' salary were forwarded—he afterwards told me the offer was a godsend, as he was getting but $10 a week on the Cleveland Plaindealer as a reporter—and in a few days Browne arrived in New York and assumed the chair. The paper languished page 98on for a few months, and then went the way of all funny papers. One day, when this had happened, I was walking up Broadway and regretting the result, for I had become very much attached to Browne. He was talking about going back to Cleveland and resuming his old position, when I suggested to him that he try lecturing. At this he laughed, declaring himself totally unfit, not being able to speak in public at all and having no subject. I insisted, and gave him as a subject, « Ghosts, » New York at the time being very much exercised over a foolish humbug got up in the newspapers and called « The Twenty-seventh-street Ghost. » Before we parted Artemus had promised to write such a lecture and to meet a knot of literary and artist friends the next evening at a noted restaurant and resort of Bohemians, and read what he had written. He came with about half his effort, and for three-quarters of an hour the party was literally in a roar. He called it « A Lecture About Ghosts, » and no small part of the fun was that there was not a word about ghosts in it. The next day he finished it, and then the question was how to bring it out. I knew an actor, and sometimes manager, by the name of De Walden, then part of the old Wallaok company, who had some money, and I managed to get him interested. He took Niblo's saloon, for one night, with the privilege of six. The first night, with the help of the press, who were all friends of Artemus, was a triumph, and he ran the week, clearing for himself and his manager $4,200. From that time his lecturing was a grand success, and, while Artemus was more than liberal, he saved money, or, rather, he made it so fast that he could not help its accumulating in his hands. He died worth almost $100,000, of which he left the income to his aged mother, and, after her death, to found an asylum for old and disabled printers, to which craft he originally belonged.

In an article on the changes which have taken place during the past century in the methods of the publishing trade, the London Standard writes: « To the owners of modern copyrights, this is the hardest fact of all—the author is the only professional man who has to enter into rivalry with his dead predecessors. The death of a leading counsel means business for the juniors; the death of a great physician, patients for his younger brethren. But the dead novelist's books live after him, and in a few years are anybody's property to issue at a price which makes the publisher shake his head at the manuscripts offered him by those who have still their reputation to earn. »

A North Island clergyman lately lectured on « Tom Hood. » The subject of the lecture was not « Tom » but « Thomas. » Hood never signed himself « Tom, » and his son deliberately adopted the shorter name that his writings should not be confounded with those of his father. « Tom » Hood, or Thomas Hood the younger, was one of the founders of Fun, and edited that paper for many years. He was a prolific writer, with considerable humor; but bore no comparison with his gifted father, He died in 1874, in his fortieth year. Hood had only two children; and his daughter Fanny (Mrs Broderip), well known as a writer of stories and verse, died a few years ago.

Two years have passed since the appearance of the Hon. W. Gisborne's « New Zealand, » and a new and revised edition is already issued. Few works on the colony are at once so compact, so correct, and so encyclopædic; and the author's well-known literary gifts are such that it occupies quite a different plane from the many private and official « handbooks » of the colony. Mr Gisborne brings rare qualifications to his task. As an old and active colonist and for a time a Minister of the Crown, he has had every opportunity of collecting accurate information, and possesses a foundation of personal knowledge of the scenes, events, and conditions with which he has to deal, that gives him a great advantage over an ordinary compiler. He is plain and straightforward in the expression of his opinions, and his chapters on federation, on civil service reform, and other practical questions, are worthy of study. Some of his words on the civil service question read as if written within the past few weeks: « Vague, fluctuating, capricious treatment of public servants is repugnant to proper organization. Promiscuous patronage, arbitrary removal, and spasmodic rushes into indiscriminate retrenchment tend only to discouragement of good service, to the infliction of injustice, and, in the end, to the increase of expenditure and to the serious injury of public interests. » Mr Gisborne is not well-advised to give dogmatically Maori etymologies. « The prefix Ngati, » he says, « means offspring, and served as the generic term for a tribe, … analogously to the use of the Irish prefix O', or the Scotch Mc, in their family nomenclature. » Over the literal meaning of this prefix Ngati, there is much dispute among authorities. « The word tapu, » he says, « is derived from ta, to mark or touch, and pu, real. » We cannot but admire the author's boldness in thus conclusively settling the origin of one of the most important words in the language: it is worthy of the late Rev. R. Taylor. We should be sorry to assert that the etymology is wrong —we are content to mark it with a very prominent note of interrogation. These however, are but minor faults, as no one will dream of referring to the book to settle disputed questions in philology. In its own field, the work is unsurpassed. It is well arranged, and contains maps, appendix of statistical tables, complete table of contents, and a good index.

It is pleasant to meet with a new book of verse that betrays in nearly every page the hand of the true poet. Such is The Repentance of Magdalene Despar, and other Poems, by G. Essex Evans, an Australian writer. It would not be difficult to find fault—to point out, if so inclined, weak stanzas and whole poems falling below the general level, and here and there an expression in prosaic form; but when the standard as a whole is high, this would be an invidious task. One need not read beyond the brief dedication and the first page of the principal poem to find that the author is no mere idle rhymester. There is an easy fluency in the style, a correctness in the rhythm, and a happy expression of the thought that are all too rare in books of verse, especially by colonial authors. The dedication is to the memory of a friend, and will give a fair idea of the author's style:

Beyond the deepening shadow of death's night
God giveth perfect light;
When earthly love and light no more can shine,
He giveth love divine;
And on the weary heart, when shadows cease,
He sets His seal of peace.

His Rest is sure, His Love is strong and deep.
Why should we weep
For those, who in the silence gently stirred
His Angel's voice have heard,
And following, passed, led by a tender hand
Into the Unknown Land?

This is perfect in its way. The principal poem shows a great command of metrical forms, especially in the lines of unusual length, and is in so many measures that no single extract can give an idea of the whole. The following two stanzas from the third part will illustrate the author's descriptive style:

With melodious sound and nearer beat the waves with ceaseless motion,
Beat the waves in measured cadence falling on the rocky strand,
And the low wind sighs responsive to the rhythm of the ocean
Like the song of some sweet singer echoing through a dreary land.

All th' immeasurable ether gleams and glows with light supernal,
Glitt'ring points of red and crystal, trembling bars of silver white,
Watchfires where the armèd angels guard the throne of the Eternal,
Outposts of a host unnumbered, scattered through the Infinite.

In « An Echo, » the poet begins with a question that must have occurred to all who enter the field of literature—

In the harmony of ages floating from the dreamy Past,
In the old romantic legends where the seeds of song were cast,
In the pleasant fields of Fancy, where the flowers of genius sprung,
Can we find a path untrodden? Can we find a song unsung?

And this is the conclusion at which he (or she) arrives:

All our songs are but the echoes of the chants long heard before.
All our loves and our ambitions like the wave-beats on the shore,
Coming, going, passing, ending, with their restless hopes and fears,
Till at last in silence buried in the cenotaph of years.

« Stories of New Zealand Life, » by James Davidson, Dunedin, are not marked by any particular literary ability, but have the merit of being simple, and free from any affectation of fine writing. Some of them are trifling enough, but all have the appearance of being based upon fact.