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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 2

Our Exchanges

page 7

Our Exchanges.

In the Inland Printer, Mr C. Schraubstadter begins an interesting series of articles on newspaper illustration. Mr W. Lodia is contributing valuable letters on the printing trade in the Argentine Republic. Among the full-page illustrations of new engraving processes, the November issue contains a magnificently-executed piece of forest scenery. In quantity and value of matter, the Inland Printer is ahead of all competitors, and in quality of paper and printing will compare with the best.

Paper and Press (Philadelphia) maintains its reputation as the most brilliantly printed of printers' trade journals. The technical matter is excellent. In the November number we have a superb full-page woodcut, « The Little Model, » and a perfect facsimile reproduction of an etching by Gillray.

The chief feature of L'Imprimerie (Liège), is a history of typography, continued from month to month.

The American Lithographer and Printer is as usual full of valuable practical information. We are glad to receive with the November issue the title and full index to vols vii-viii, 1886-7.

The A. T. Journal for January is as usual chiefly occupied with society matters. We have gathered some Australian items from its columns.

The American Magazine for December is a specially good number, both as regards matter and illustrations. The most important article is on « Christ-Ideals in American Art, » by W. H. Ingersoll, and is illustrated by fifteen fine engravings from paintings and sculpture. « Christmas in the Grand Army » narrates the formation in 1861 of a club of eight comrades who each undertook to keep a diary of events and hold annual meetings to compare notes. Year by year the survivors held their Christmas tryst until the close of the war; and at the time of writing, « Number Eight » records that only two survive, while of the eight little volumes which passed through so many vicissitudes, six remain. Two more interesting chapters of the serial « Olivia Delaplaine » follow; a Salmon-fishing in the Cascapedia » and « Natural Gas in Findlay » are excellent articles, well illustrated. « Walton's Christmas Gifts is a pleasant little story. There are several little poems, « The Naturalist, » by Edith Thomas, being specially good. Cyrus Willard gives us « A Chat with the Good Gray Poet. » The writer is an enthusiastic Whitmaniac, and repeats the most commonplace utterances of his hero with a reverential awe which is somewhat comical. He quotes admiringly a characteristic « poem »— new, probably, to most of our readers:—

Once in the days of my youth
I roamed through a beautiful city,
Noting the houses, the stores, the churches, theatres,
Markets: acquiring the architecture, customs,
Looks and lingo of the people; hiving them
All up for future reference.
But now all I remember of that
City is a Woman who detained me
There for the Love of Me. Houses, stores,
Customs, costumes, churches, theatres, looks
And lingoes all are vanished, are
Gone, are played out. But the
Woman—She remains.

Whitman's creed reaches a deep lower than paganism, being simply that each man should worship Himself. But in the case of a writer so artificial, his sincerity is open to doubt. He masquerades as a poetic savage. Swinburne, in indicating Tupper and « Ossian » as his models, does them an injustice. Whitman's trick—to jolt and jerk the reader by breaking his lines in the worst possible places —is his own. Take any prose, the more uncouth the better—take an auction catalogue or cargo list—and the compositor can turn it into Whitmanesque verses. The interviewer asked Whitman what his theory of poetry was. Walt didn't know that he had any.— Among the minor articles is one relating to a sèance with the celebrated Slade, revealing the interesting fact that the Welsh language is unintelligible to the inhabitants of the World of Spirits.

The Bookmart (Philadelphia) is edited by a writer known to some of our Napier friends— Mr Halkett Lord. It is just the kind of magazine for an hour or two of uninterrupted quiet. Pull of gossip about books and authors old and modern, curiosities of literature, book sales and book collectors, it is an acquisition to any book-lover. The literary reviews are by Julian Hawthorne, who, in the issue before us, is justly indignant at the editor of a reprint of one of Blake's poems drawing a parallel between the author and Matthew Arnold— « the hardest thing of Blake that has probably ever been said. » The Book-mart has a good cover. An old book-worm in skull-cap and spectacles is deep in a heavily-bound quarto, and half-a-dozen precious volumes lie on the table before him. The emblematic border includes the marks of Caxton and other early printers.