Literary Society.

On Tuesday, July 5th. Mr. R. J. Larkin read a paper on "Parodies and Parodists." Beginning with "The Battle of the Frogs and Mice," he cited various parodists up to Chesterton, Squire, and Bradde, touching en route upon Sir John Phillips' "Splendid Shilling," Shelley's parody on "Peter Bell," and Cowper's apt definition of parody—"a stiff dose, sweetened with humour."

Mr. Larkin's own definition was: "Something that the author might have written while drunk," and in conclusion he said that parody was a literary form much used in youth and abandoned in middle age, just when the critical powers were maturing. Perhaps this was the reason why it did not occupy a more honoured place in literature.

Mr Larkin illustrated his remarks with readings. These his audience found most amusing. "The Lake Isle of Innisfree" became—

"I must go back to a vest again"

"And walk about in a damn, loud kilt." while Wordsworth was made to say—

"I want to hear the porter's cry

"Change here for Ennesdale."

A particularly interesting discussion followed. Mr. Katz told us that America was able to laugh at herself. We turned to the characteristics of this age which, according to Mr Phillips, was destructive and decadent. Mr. Reardon had the last word—"An Age that could produce 'Hatter's Castle' must be decadent."

The next meeting was of a somewhat different character. Miss Peggy Macdonald gave her impressions of two great Australian novelists—Henry Handel Richardson and Katharine Susannah Prichard— contrasting their interpretations of Australia.

"The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" was. she said, the story of a stranger. This, the greatest of Australian novels, dealt with character set in an unsympathetic environment, and had for its motif the Latin line: "The heavens may change but not the mind of those who cross the seas."

The greatest interpretation of typical Australian life was—she suggested—Katherine Prichard's "Working Bullocks." This was a novel of life in the jarrah forests of West Australia, and laid stress on the factors of fertility and fecundity in the lives of those who were like labouring bullocks.

Miss Macdonald spoke of the other works of this author—"Black Opal"—somewhat immature, but with a rare quality of excitement, a dark passion akin to "Wuthering Heights" and yet lit up by the ideals of service and sacrifice—"Coonardoo," the saddest of her books, and "Haxby's Circus." the most cynical. Katharine Priehard was the great interpreter of the Australian soil, whether it was the hot. arid plains of the North-West, the opal mining camps in New South Wales, or the rich wine and corn lands through which Haxby's circus passed.

In closing, Miss Macdonald touched on two important questions: Why these, Australia's two greatest novelists, were women, and why New Zealand had produced no great novel. She suggested that Colonial women came closer to the realities of life than their sisters in the Old World. As to New Zealand, two small islands, isolated from the centres of thought. Australia had the advantage of being a continent, more cruel, less obviously beautiful. Katharine Mansfield, with her delicate portrayal of nuances of mood, was the genius of insular New Zealand.