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Author and Books.

While we are glad to welcome stories of colonial life by men who have lived and worked in the colonies, and have taken a useful part in their concerns, we cannot regard Mr Chamier's « Philosopher Dick » as a success. There is no lack of local color; but the author has been over-ambitious with his first story. The days of interminable novels are past, and not even the genius of Smollett or Fielding would make their hundred-chaptered stories popular with readers of to-day. Mr Chamier's book is too big altogether. With three or four stories of one-fourth the length he might have made a hit; but we do not think many will even skim, while still fewer will read the six hundred pages of « Philosopher Dick. »

An English correspondent writes:— « I believe that Mr Douglas McLean, who has just returned to the colony, is preparing for publication the life and official correspondence of his father, the late Sir Donald McLean, k.c.m.g. The publication of Sir George Whitmore's 'History of the Maori War' is postponed in consequence of his unforeseen detention in the Colony. » Colonists will look with interest for both of these works, especially as they may be expected to give the history of a certain troublous period in New Zealand history from diametrically opposite points of view. Mr McLean, so far, is quite unknown as a writer; Sir George Whitmore, on the contrary, has contributed extensively to the colonial press, and his high literary abilities are well known.

A recent poem, Raymond, by Mr A. L. Stevenson, contains a stanza happily describing a very familiar class of literature:

His hopes not wholly crushed, he wrote a book,
And had it published at his own expense,
'Twas one of those that if you care to look
In Mudie's shelves, you'll find in shoals immense
Shallow and watery as a summer brook;
Powerless for good, yet void of all offence;
O'er whose perusal you may nod and wink,
Without one sentence rousing you to think.

In recording the discovery of a lost treatise attributed by all ancient writers to Aristotle, The Times says that it is almost unprecedented in the whole history of classical learning, and certainly without a parallel for interest and importance since the memorable discovery in the sixteenth century of five books of the Annals of Tacitus in the library of a German monastery. The British Museum acquired not very long ago a collection of papyrus rolls from a source in Egypt, which for obvious reasons, it is not expedient to specify too particularly. Nothing was known of the contents of these rolls when they were acquired, and it was not until they came to be examined closely by the experts of the museum that it was found that three of them contained the text, hitherto unknown except in detached fragments, of the treatise on « The Constitution of Athens » ascribed to Aristotle by the universal testimony of antiquity. This treatise is supposed to have been the first and most important section of that collection of constitutions, to the number of 158, which Aristotle was believed by ancient writers to have made. It has now been recovered very nearly in a complete form, though the opening is missing, and the concluding chapters are sadly mutilated. It may be read by those who are learned in Greek palæography on the original papyrus in the British Museum; fac-similes will shortly be at the disposal of the learned world; and the text itself has been printed by order of the trustees of the British Museum, and will shortly be published on the same authority, together with a scholarly introduction and copious illustrative notes from the pen of Mr F. G. Kenyon, an assistant in the Department of Manuscripts. Discussing the authenticity of the manuscript, The Times continues:— « There is, however the presumption— prima facie a strong one, as every scholar who recollects the names of Simonides and Shapira will admit—of forgery or deception to be considered. Strong as this presumption may be in the abstract, imperative as is the need of wariness and even of suspicion in such a case, the presumption can, we think, be rebutted and the suspicion allayed at every point. We need not rely on the approved skill of the authorities of the British Museum, on the difficulty, almost amounting to impossibility, of manufacturing papyrus rolls so as to deceive even a tyro in the matter, on the fact that neither the vendors nor the purchasers of the rolls knew the nature of their contents when the bargain was made, or on any other form of external evidence that might be adduced. Unless we are mistaken the internal evidence is absolutely conclusive. » It thus appears that we have in the papyrus rolls at the British Museum one of the oldest Greek manuscripts in the world, which, if not a rank forgery, must be assigned to the end of the first or the beginning of the second century of our era. Whether it is really the work of Aristotle is another question. The German scholar Valentine Rose, one of the principal authorities on the Aristotelian canon, holds that it belongs to that class of Aristotelian writings which were composed, not by the philosopher himself, but by obscurer members of the Peripatetic school; but the opinion of Rose, though of great authority, has not been generally accepted on this point by other scholars, German and English.

Marion Crawford, the novelist, is said to have a firm faith in astrology, of the truth of which he says he had some practical proofs while living in India. Now he does not begin a book or sell a manuscript without consulting the stars. In England belief in this old world science is rapidly gaining ground, and there are numbers of educated men, holding prominent positions, who believe that their fates can be foretold by the stars, and consult astrologers regarding their future. A remarkable fact is the half-belief of many who profess to repudiate it. The incredulity of Sir Walter Scott, for example, in astrology and second-sight, is evidently assumed. Judge Maning, the « Pakeha-Maori, » who in Old New Zealand ridicules the pretensions of the old Maori tohunga, immediately proceeds to relate one narrative after another of their « clairvoyance » which proves after all, that he believed in their possession of certain occult gifts.

That excellent magazine, the Girls' Own Paper, quite unconsciously prepared a little surprise for its New Zealand readers in its November part. Such an amazing patchwork of fiction as « Miss Kate Marsden: her Mission: » it has rarely been their lot to read. Certainly the adventures are surpassed by those of Lemuel Gulliver or of Peter Wilkins; but these, with all their circumstantial detail, were after all, evident fictions, whereas the narrative bearing the signature of « Emma Brewer » does not profess to be in any sense a voyage imaginaire. We cannot but feel sympathy with the lady author, and with the respectable publishers who have been so cruelly hoaxed by a woman whose recital of imaginary adventures would have done credit to a mediæval lady-saint and miracle-monger. Those who came in contact with Miss Marsden in New Zealand were perhaps the most surprised of all; for while they certainly regarded her as somewhat eccentric, they did not suspect that she was under any kind of hallucination. The heroine in question undertook a « wonderful and dangerous mission, » intending to devote herself to the material and spiritual welfare of lepers. Finding them unpleasant and unromantic, she made an extended tour; but like Mark Twain's Yankee in King Arthur's Court who was despatched to kill the imaginary dragon, and found that it answered every purpose to come back and say that he had done so, Miss Marsden has told prodigious tales of the feats she has accomplished, and of the « wonderful and almost impossible task she has set herself to do. » With her adventures in Russia and Siberia we have no concern; but we have to confess to considerable scepticism when we read what she has to say of New Zealand. From what would fill over a column, we quote a few lines:

She never questioned where she was going, or how; it was quite enough for her that she was wanted. She was fetched sometimes by a couple of men, or she was sent for, and went alone. A two days' journey or a five-it was nothing to her. She was ready when summoned in a few minutes, putting on her bonnet, and taking with her, of course, her little medicine chest, and something else which you will not guess—a few pair of old boots and shoes, without which she rarely took a journey.

She always begged these of her friends, for it frequently happened that she met young Englishmen of good birth tramping along in search of work, and then she never failed to put the question, « Are your feet sore? » to which, as a rule, the answer came, « Yes, indeed they are. » In that case she would stop, and attend to and bandage their travel-worn feet, and give them a pair of boots from her stock….

On one occasion she had a long journey, and one beset with danger, to make. She could not afford a conveyance, and asked the Maoris to lend her a buggy. A buggy is a large cumbersome carriage, very light, having four wheels. They lent her one with pleasure, for she was a great favorite, and with two thoroughbreds off she started alone. On the way she saw a herd of wild bulls coming. She knew her only safety lay in rushing towards them as fast as she could, for if you walk towards them they will walk to meet you, but if they think you stronger than they it frightens them. So she stood up and yelled and cracked her whip and urged her horses on, and succeeded in passing them safely. But further on she came on eight more, with their heads down and looking dangerous. She lashed her horses, and urged them on, and being thoroughbreds, they simply flew. One of the bulls gored the horse nearest to him, ripping its side, but she dared not pause, and eventually the bulls were left safely behind. That night, she slept in the forest alone, after having sewn up her poor horse.

She tells wild and thrilling stories of midnight journeys through trackless bush, solitary night-watches by camp fires, hair-breadth escapes from wild creatures, fording raging torrents, and swimming for life. One is reminded while listening to her of Bret Harte and Rider Haggard.

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—One is also reminded of Munchausen and of Ferdinand Mendez Pinto. It is almost incredible that any one who has ever set foot in New Zealand could have given an account of the colony so utterly unlike the reality. It is quite plain that Miss Marsden's imaginary picture of the country before she saw it was never effaced by what she did see. The episode of the « herd of wild bulls » is particularly rich, as also the terrible wild beasts (which she prudently omits to name) in the native woods. The account of her departure from the colony is good:

« Harra mai Kiruto! » was the greeting the Maoris yelled out to her when she was starting from Nelson for England. There were about thirty of them, and they continued to shout till they reached her. Her mother exclaimed « Who on earth are these? »

« They are Maoris, mother. Do you go on board at once. »

« Oh, child, come and hide, » said the mother.

« Why? » she replied, and began to call back in a loud clear voice, « Harra mai Kiruto. »

Then they all squatted, and she with them, and they chatted like so many parrots. One said, « You seek (sick), Kate Marsden? »

« Very, » was her reply.

« Me hold your headee all the way. Me give skipper hundred pounds to hold your headee. »

After deducting fiction, the residue is the merest twaddle. Of this the writer is painfully aware, and her apology for recording it is that « every detail about a person who stands out from the rank of her fellows a bright example of devotion, courage, and self-forgetful-ness, is interesting to the masses who look on, and for whose benefit these qualities are exercised. » In Miss Marsden's childhood we are told, she was « constantly in mischief, » and « never told a lie. » The object of the articles is to collect money for « the mission, » and amounts up to £50 are acknowledged. She is fond of the society of dignitaries, and was presented to the Queen. « She is very proud of having been presented. But she says, with an amount of distress, ' the dress cost me fifty pounds; think what I could have done with that!' » New Zealanders are not likely to contribute much to this erratic young lady's « mission. »