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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 3

Literature

Literature

If a ready gift of rhyming, with the impulse to turn every passing thought into verse, constituted a poet, Mr W. E. Wills, of Otahuhu, who has issued the first quarterly part of « A Budget of Songs and Ballads, » would have an undoubted claim to the title. He is well known to readers of colonial literature; he has published two or three volumes of verse, his pieces are found in many odd corners of newspapers, and some of his best work has appeared in the collections of Australasian rhymes given to the world by the industrious Mr Sladen. But Mr Wills is too wholesale to attain a high standard. A man who is capable of turning out « four hundred lyrics » in two years is an object of terror rather than of reverence; and the natural result of this kind of over-production is that it is not easy to find a piece in his collection of which it can be said « This is a true poem. » Mr Bracken, with genuine Hibernian imagery, finds many gems in Mr Wills's bouquet, and gems there are—single stanzas of real grace and beauty, but Mr Wills fails—though not so conspicuously as Mr Bracken—in sustained effort. His ear is true, and we find few halting lines; and the thoughts are as a rule pure and genuine, though often superficial and commonplace. In describing the beauties of nature he is at home; when he attempts to express lofty sentiments he generally drops into bombast. He is specially weak in his Maori legends. The measure of « Hiawatha » is a dangerous one to follow—that poem stands alone. To imitate it is to parodize. No one in this respect has approached Pennell in the Song of In-the-Water, where he describes the young lady floating down stream, upborne by crinoline:

From the forest shade primeval
Piggey-Wiggey looked out at her;
He, the very Youthful Porker—
He, the everlasting Grunter—
Gazed upon her there and wondered!
With his nose out, Rokey-pokey—
With his tail up, Curley-wurley—
Wondered what on earth the joke was!

This is much better than « Hinemoa. » « The Crew of the Good Ship Press » is a song of the Craft, somewhat empty, and marked by a confusion of metaphors:

There's a gallant crew of the good ship Press,
And the guns thunder forth her fame;
Her cruise is of peace, for she sails but to bless,
Or to fight in Freedom's name.

There is no poetry here. « Advice to Poets, » is anything but good advice, and is another sample of the loud-mouthed style:

I'd have the poet, when singing a song,
Shout a thundering curse at the reign of wrong!

Mr Wills must be deficient in the sense of humor, or he could never have allowed so grotesque a couplet to pass. He says:

—a poet's song should be wild and sweet,
And measured by worth, and not by feet.
Will they measure and bolt with rule and bars,
When the poet's flight is above the stars?
Must it be « eight by six » or « nine by seven »
When he measures the love and the depths of heaven?

This is unmitigated nonsense, but worse is to follow:—

Let mountains fall and the oceans dash,
And storm-clouds open and burst with rain,
Volcanoes boil with rage—and splash
Their liquid hell o'er the world again,

&c. Happily, Mr Wills is not often seized with a poetic spasm as acute as this. But he gives us much—too much—of mild Namby-Pamby of the Della-Cruscan type. One of his most gracefully-expressed and best-finished pieces is « The Crown of Thorns; » but it is false in sentiment and somewhat irreverent:

Yet the singers of God shall be crowned with thorns,
And amid the frosted leaves,
They shall groan and cry for freedom's sake,
Like Christ between the thieves!

—which is Mr Wills's way of saying that poets (like other people) must sometimes put up with a little salutary criticism. « Apollo and Marsyas » is another fling at the critics; but when a poet deems himself an Apollo, whose flight is above the stars, and who is capable of measuring the love and the depths of heaven, necessity is laid upon the critic to remind him that after all he is only walking on the earth, with his head in a very prosaic fog. The truest and most beautiful poem in this collection is the ballad « At Christmas Eve, » which contains stanzas worthy of Jean Ingelow.

It is so rare an experience to find a graceful piece of original verse in a New Zealand journal, that it is with pleasure that we copy from an Auckland paper the following pretty sonnet, entitled « The Poet's Mission, » and signed « A. W. Hurry »:—

The poet's mission is to sing of love
And beauty in its choicest aspects here:
It may be that no sweeter themes above
Woo the angelic lyres to linger near.
In rosy youth what is there so inspires
The bard to sing, albeit in simplest lays?
Love is the motive principle that fires
The soul to song, in life's Elysian days.
The grace and splendor of this southern sky;
The ocean's breeze-kissed wavelets in their glee;
The charms of rural scenery, that vie
In beauty each with each, so dear to me—
These are the poet's themes, and these combined
In woman's loveliness are here enshrined.

Our poetic friend « Macandro, » in the Buller Miner, chooses commonplace subjects for his rhymes. His latest meditation is on a Brick, « the type of lasting strength, the emblem of stability. » He muses thus:

Prosaic Brick! What art thou more
Than silicate aluminic
(With iron oxide), nine by four,
And three inch thick?

Yet, when we gaze on thee, the past
Rolls up its curtain, and the brain
Sees the Euphrates, and the vast
Chaldean plain.

O'er all the earth, in every scene
Where man an upward life has spent,
The indurated clay has been
His ally and his monument.

Babel and Nineveh have gone
Like morning dreams; the bricks they made
Cumber the desert—these alone
Have failed to fade,

But still in uncouth signs relate
To us of other times and shores,
Tales of primeval kings and great
Forgotten wars.

Granite and marble waste away,
The red imperishable block
Lasts with the planet—the fired clay
Outlives the rock!

The third number of Zealandia is enlarged in size, and the leading serial keeps up its interest. The diary form is the most difficult in which to construct a story—incidents are foreshadowed as they could not be in any record written from day to day. Some of the sentences are somewhat cumbrous and overloaded; but notwithstanding minor defects, « The Mark of Cain » is still the best thing in the magazine. It should, properly, take the first place; but on the principle of putting the small potatoes at the top of the sack, the editor leads off with « Arrow-heads. » The best essay by far that has yet appeared is a well-written and thoughtful paper on « Our Hospitals » by the Rev. A. North. A graphic sketch of Lake Wanaka completes the series of papers on « Lakeland. » « Old China » is a vague rhapsody, set up in one and two-line paragraphs to make it look readable. « The Answer of the Dead, » by a pseudonymous writer, is the worst thing we have ever seen in a New Zealand periodical. How such a disgusting piece of indecency ever found a place in print passes our comprehension. There is one good piece of poetry— « The Wanderer's Dream, » by F. J. Coleman. Bishop Suter's verses are not up to his usual standard, and « Down by the Sea » is the work of a writer who might produce good verse if he chose, but who does not choose. There is some slipshod writing in the review department, where we read of « men not merely guiltless of superficial courtesy. » Hitherto, there has been neither vignette nor fancy initial in the magazine; but when he reached page 154 it suddenly occurred to the compositor to put in a big tail-piece, altogether out of keeping with the rest of the work.

Messrs Griffith, Farran, & Co. (successors of the old house of Newbery) have sent us, through our London agent, No. 1 of the Newbery House Magazine, a monthly review for clergy and laity—truly a wonderful shillings-worth. On its literary staff are the ablest writers of the « High Church » party, and we have read with interest the whole of its hundred-and-twenty-eight large octavo pages. On the engraved title is a medallion representing « Goldsmith introduced to Newbery by Dr Johnson, » and the introductory article on Newbery House and its founder, gives an account of the kindly old bookseller which should be specially interesting to members of the Craft. The Rev. T. Moore makes out a strong case for the repeal of the Act of Submission, by which, as he shows, the Church of England is hampered and placed at a disadvantage as compared with any other religious body. He is strongly averse to disestablishment, which to outsiders—and to many within the church—appears to be the most effective remedy for the evil of which he complains. « How to find Texts » is the first of a series of « lay and clerical conferences, » and is thoroughly sound and practical. The Rev. J. M. Rodwell begins a series of learned critical notes on the Book of Psalms, the first instalment including Ps. i-vi; the editor supplies « Sermon Outlines » for the month; and C. Thayne furnishes « Instructions on the Creed. » Three very able articles— « The Lincoln Trial, » by Canon Benham; « Catholic Reform in France, » by Bishop Jenner; and « The Ornaments Rubric, » by the Rev. T. Belcher, are all by men who seek the Christian ideal in the church of the Middle Ages. The same spirit characterizes Mrs. Hernaman's glowing sketch of the Rev. James Skinner of Newland, a singularly wrongheaded and pugnacious ritualist, who in the early days of the movement defied with the utmost impartiality, bishops, church courts, and the privy council itself. The biography is instructive, if only to show how a noble and beautiful Christian character may be associated with a narrow and ascetic creed, and with strange aberrations both in doctrine and practice. Science is represented by a brief popular article on « The Recent Eclipse of the Sun, » by Sir Robert S. Ball, Astronomer-Royal for Ireland, and some thoughts on Darwin, by the Rev. W. C. Green. There is an original hymn with music, and a series of sonnets on the lepe page 110martyr of Molokai. (Strange that neither the church nor the world has any word of recognition for the noble Moravians who so long ago set the example of self-abnegation.) « The Bishop's Bible, » illustrated with a, facsimile title-page of that celebrated edition, is, strange to say, a fiction by D. Christie Murray and H. Herman. The three opening chapters are very interesting, but give no clue as to the title « Vin Vincent, » a writer whose acquaintance we make for the first time, contributes a beautiful little complete story— « Captain Smith, late of the Royal Navy. » The subject is hackneyed enough—a life-boat and a wreck—but the little story is alone worth the price of the magazine. The first instalment of « Boy, » a tale by Miss Milman, is given, and is illustrated with beautiful engravings. The hero is a religiously-precocious child of the type of Shorthouse's « Little Schoolmaster Mark. » In the most serious publication there is always something comically incongruous, and this element is found in the correspondence. « A Sufferer, » writing on congregational singing, displays strange ideas as to fitting behaviour in a place of worship. Annoyed at a lady sitting next him in a London church « indulging in excruciating discords, » he adds: « I offered her the music, and she scorned it. I scowled, and stood with my fingers in my ears, but to no effect » ! The magazine is finely printed, and in point of literary merit will bear comparison with any of the leading English periodicals.

Mr J. Crerar, bookseller, Napier, has sent us a copy of No. 12 of the Scottish Art Review (Glasgow, Kerr & Richardson; London, Elliot Stock.) This is a high-class art magazine, large quarto, and finely-illustrated, some of the process engravings being separately worked in monotint. The type is old-face, of a decidedly French character. The cover is a coarse reddish-brown paper, with a bold engraved device in mediæval style by Walter Crane. The literary standard is high, the article of greatest general interest being the quaintly-illustrated « Bohemianism in Anticoli-Corrado, » by Percy Sturdee.—Mr Crerar sends us also No 8 of The Torch, Mr E. A. Petherick's admirable and comprehensive colonial book circular, former numbers of which we have already noted.

Very few people, we imagine, know anything of Mr Andrew Young, the author of the « Happy Land » —the most popular children's hymn in the world, and the following particulars from the Methodist Recorder will be of interest. After stating that he addressed a recent Sabbath gathering of children in the Albert Hall, Edinburgh, it goes on to say: « He is now eighty years of age, still mentally and physically vigorous, and retaining in all its early freshness his sympathy with children. The hymn was composed in 1838. The tune to which it is married is an old Indian air which has blended with the music of the woods in the primæval forest long before Sunday schools were thought of. The hymn was composed for the melody. Its bright and strongly marked phrases struck Mr Young's musical ear the first time he heard it casually played in the drawing room. He asked for it again and again. It haunted him. Being accustomed to express his thoughts and feelings in rhyme, words naturally followed, and so the hymn was created. It had been used for some years in Edinburgh before it became generally known. Mr Young happened to have his hymn performel in the presence of his intimate friend, Mr Gall, a member of the publishing firm of Gall & Inglis. It got into print. It has been translated into nineteen different languages. No Sunday school hymn-book is without it. The author has never received, and, indeed, has never been offered, a penny in remuneration. It is only recently that Professor David Masson, referring to the unique influence of this lyric, stated a most touching incident in the life of Thackeray. Walking one day in a slum district in London he suddenly came upon a band of gutter children sitting on the pavement. They were singing. Drawing nearer he heard the words, 'There is a happy land, far, far away!' As he looked at the ragged choristers and their squalid surroundings, and saw that their pale faces were lit up with a thought which brought both forgeti'ulness and hope, the tender-hearted cynic burst into tears. »

Australian Progress in Australian Art is the title of a monograph which Mr Chevalier is busy preparing. This is a subject on which he should be an authority.

Mr G. Meredith is engaged on a new novel, the subject of which is said to be the romance of journalism. Mr Meredith is now 64 years of age.