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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 5

Authors and Books

page 9

Authors and Books.

Let the unlearned reader beware of the scientific column of the ordinary newspaper! Fully one-half of the current items on natural science are erroneous. For example, one of these items, which has been floating about for a year or two, states that Wöhler « overthrew forever the notion that organic substances were exclusively the product of the operation of a so-called vital force. » Wöhler did nothing of the kind. By his researches into vital chemistry he proved that certain compounds, hitherto supposed to be peculiar to organic bodies, could be produced by synthesis—a very different thing. The same article complacently refers to the innumerable products from coal-tar, and the anticipation (so far unrealized) of a German chemist that the fibre of wood may yet become a food-source by the conversion of starch into cellulin, as proving that we can obtain by artifice those necessaries of life for which we were formerly dependent upon (so-called) vital forces. The writer has overlooked one consideration which is of fundamental importance. The stores of coal and the fibres of the forest-tree are as much the result of vital forces as the starch of the potato or the sugar of the beet. If he could show a block of wood or a lump of coal produced by synthesis there might be some force in his argument.

The London Echo, in its « Portrait Gallery, » has an admirable and appreciative description of Robert Buchanan, « one of the most interesting entities in the literary world of England to-day.… He wears the white surplice of a minor chorister in the great cathedral of Victorian song. He is selfappointed censor-in-chief of British morals, and has assumed the office of beadle towards all vagabond French writers whom he finds on these shores, placing them in the pillory of his detestation, and pelting them with all the hard and forceful names he learned during a long and dreary term as a poor scholar at Glasgow University.… The other day, to an interviewer, he boasted that he had been called by a greater variety of zoologic and other opprobrious epithets than any other living English writer. He has furnished the stage with all sorts of garments, some new and original, but many more cut and modified from other poets, dramatists, and novelists. He would adapt a play with equal alacrity from Bunyan, Paul de Kock, the Hindu Vedas, or a schoolgirl's story by A.L.O.E., and in every case would sting the dramatic critics to sheer insanity with a neat little author's note on the program, explaining how very much was due to the adaptor.… He is no common man. The one thing this many-sided pugilistic genius has not, neither in the short half-century of his life, nor in the three decades of it he has spent in London, learned to do, is to play the amiable, and purringly arch-back to be stroked and petted.… His great fault is over-production. He is essentially Scotch, and untameably aggressive. Contention is as the breath of life to him. But he commands respect by his strong masculinity, his detestation of all coquetting with honeyed sensualities, and the honest faith and confidence that is in him, in his own words, that 'that soul alone blasphemes which trembles and despairs.' »

Mr W. J. Linton, the veteran wood-engraver, has just issued a fine edition of his poems. The following is the somewhat anacreontic prologue:—

In childhood's unsuspicious hours
The fairies crowned my head with flowers.
Youth came: I lay at Beauty's feet;
She smiled and said my song was sweet.
Then Age; and Love no longer mine,
My brows I shaded with the vine.
With flowers and love and wine and song,
O Death! life hath not been too long.

Mr Walter Crane, the artist and socialistic enthusiast, exhibited his first picture in the Academy at an almost unprecedentedly early age. He was only sixteen. His theme was the Lady of Shallott. That was in 1862; but curiously enough his pictures were rejected every year for the next ten years.

Mr J. T. Clegg (« Th' Owd Weighver »), foreman of Messrs Wrigley's printing office, Rochdale, has published a little book of verses under the title of « Reaund bi the Derby; and other sketches in the Lancashire Dialect. » It is not only in dialect pieces that he excels, as is evidenced by the following introductory sonnet:

Here I, a lagging gleaner in the field
Of thought, have gathered up a little sheaf,
Left by the mighty reapers who did wield
Their shining sickles on the golden leaf
In days gone past; and, in the dear belief
That all my hoardings are not chaff and straw,
Beneath the critic's flail I lay the chief
Of my scant store, waiting with little awe
The issue of his toil. What grain is lurking
Among these weeds and tares will then be told;
If sound and sweet, or barely worth the working,
Unpriced, or fitting to he bought and sold:
Meanwhile, this harvest being safely home,
I'll till my ground that other crops may come.

Christian missionaries have done more than any other class of men to promote the science of philology, and incidentally all the sciences. They have translated many European books on science, geography, mathematics, history, philosophy, &c, into Chinese. They have translated the Bible into twelve Chinese languages, and they are preparing to translate it into the remaining fifteen.

« Silas Marner » has been included in the list of books used in the public schools of India, and a preliminary order for 500 copies has just reached the publishers. Mr Blackwood states that the sale of all the earlier works of George Eliot is maintained in a remarkable way—in fact, more are sold now in twelve months than were disposed of in the same time during the closing years of her life.

Mr W. H. Lucy, in a recent article in the British Weekly, brings out the little-known fact that the father of Charles Dickens was for a time on the staff of the Daily News. In dealing with the wide-spread conviction that, failing all else, one can write to the papers and make a lucrative living, he wonders why Dickens did not cause Micawber to join the Press—probably as editor, certainly on the editorial staff, possibly as dramatic critic, a position which involves a free run of the theatres and a more than nodding acquaintance with the dramatic stars of the day. Perhaps, he says, Dickens avoided this episode because it was too literally near the truth in the life of the person who, all unconsciously stood as the lay-figure of David Copperfield's incomparable friend. It is, I believe, not generally known that Charles Dickens's father did, in his last desolate days, become a member of the Press. When Dickens was made editor of the Daily News he thoughtfully provided for his father by installing him leader of the Parliamentary corps of that journal. He, of course, knew nothing of journalism; was not even capable of shorthand. Happily he was not required to take notes, but generally to overlook things, a post which exactly suited Mr Micawber. So he was inducted, and filled the office even for a short time after his son had impetuously vacated the editorial chair. Only the other day there died an original member of the Daily News Parliamentary corps, who told me he quite well remembered his first respected leader, his grandly vague conception of his duties, and his almost ducal manner of not performing them.

Mr Edward Bellamy, according to the New York Commercial Advertiser, is tired of « Looking Backward. » A lady who met him was suggesting a continuation of that romance when Mr Bellamy broke out, « You could not offer me any price which would induce me to write anything in any way referring to that book of mine. I am so weary of it that the very mention of its name even arouses in me a feeling of positive illness. » The lady thereupon observed that she had never read it, when Mr Bellamy grasped her hand, effusively saying, a « I can only say that I envy your ignorance. »

Dr George F. Root, the author and composer of « Rally Round the Flag, Boys, » « Tramp, Tramp, Tramp, the Boys are Marching, » and other well known lyrics of war and peace, as well as of many popular hymns, celebrated the completion of his seventieth year at his home in Chicago lately.

In many music books the popular melody of « Home, sweet home, » is described as a Sicilian air. The late Charles Mackay, the song-writer, gave the following authentic and interesting account of the origin of the air: « In one of our very many conversations on well-known English melodies I asked Sir Henry Bishop for information on the subject of 'Home, sweet home,' the authorship of which was often attributed to him, and as often denied by many, who claimed it as a national Sicilian air which Sir Henry had discovered and rearranged. He therefore favored me with the whole history. He had been engaged in his early manhood by the firm of Goulding, D'Almaine and Co., musical publishers of Soho-square, to edit a collection of the national melodies from all countries. In the course of his labors he discovered that he had no Sicilian melody that he thought worthy of reproduction, and as a ' Sicilian Melody' had been announced in the prospectus which Messrs Golding and D'Almaine had issued to the trade, Sir Henry thought that he must invent one. The result was the now well-known air, which he composed to the verses of an American author, Mr Howard Payne, then resident in England. When the collection was published the melody became so popular that, to use a common phrase, it took the town by storm, and several musical publishers, believing it to be Sicilian and non-copyright, re-issued it at a cheaper rate than that at which it could be procured from Messrs Goulding and D'Almaine. The result was a series of actions for piracy and breach of copyright against the publishers who were implicated. When the case came on for trial Sir Henry Bishop was called as a witness, and deposed on oath to the facts as above set forth, and as be stated them to me many years afterwards. Messrs Goulding and D'Almaine obtained a verdict on this evidence against the pirates, with merely nominal damages. » There is a little romance attached to the words of the song. They were written by John Howard Payne, the American actor and dramatic author, for Mary Harden, page 10daughter of General Harden, with whom he was in love, but who turned a deaf ear to the young man's wooing. Miss Harden died very recently. Although indifferent to his affection she treasured his poem. She was offered large sums for the original manuscript, which was interlined with a love-declaration, but would never part with it, and it is said to be buried in the coffin with her.

Every one knows the romantic story of the composition, by Rouget de Lisle, of the words and music of the « Marseillaise » in a night of marvellous inspiration. The story, it seems, like many another literary and historic anecdote, must « go. » The Echo, in reference to the horror expressed by certain papal journals in France at Cardinal Lavigerie's action in ordering this revolutionary melody to be played, says: « The objectors forgot that Rouget de Lisle's words were composed for an air already in existence. The air was composed before the Revolution broke out, and its author was one Grisons, choirmaster of St Omer, who introduced it into an oratorio founded on Racine's 'Esther.' Roman Catholics, therefore, need not object to a tune which was really ecclesiastical in its origin. »

The plaintive Welsh air, « Morva Rhuddlan, » was composed by King Caradoc's Court minstrel immediately after the battle of Rhuddland Marsh, in which the Welsh forces suffered a crushing defeat, and their royal commander was left dead upon the field. This tune, which was written in the year 795, is believed to be the oldest Welsh air in existence.

A London telegram, dated 19th January, reports: « Aristotle's treatise on the Constitution of Athens has been discovered in papyrus manuscript, and secured for the British Museum for £3000. » This, we imagine, is a good deal more than the fine old Asclepiad received in his lifetime for the copyright.