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right Bill. That these notes may be, and sometimes are, property of considerable value, is shown by the fact that Mr. James Payn, whose weekly notes constitute one of the principal attractions of the paper in which they appear, has thought well to reprint them in a volume, which has been eagerly taken up. It is also proved by the fact that Mr. George Augustus Sala has done the same thing. Now such notes ought certainly to be protected, and I hope this point will be borne in mind when the Bill goes into Committee.

Mr. Baker also suggests that at the Annual Meeting members should discuss points rising out of the Report. The Chairman did invite discussion at the last meeting-and there was some, but such discussion can be only valuable when none are allowed to speak except members who have given due notice and have prepared themselves beforehand, and have followed the action of the committee, and so placed themselves in a position to judge the questions from many points of view. Such discussions are apt to be desultory and to go away from the question before the meeting. For instance, at one of our meetings in Willis s Rooms, there a few years ago, when Lord Lytton invited discussion on the principles which should guide the management of literary property, one man got up and asked the meeting if his publisher was a liar for sending him certain accounts? As if such a very important question could be asked without examining the accounts! Another got up to say that there was no such thing as a 5s. book. third rose to deny a statement made in the paper that had just been read that an ordinary 6s. novel could be produced, in numbers, at Is. If, however, we were to lay down certain definite points for discussion, if these were announced beforehand, such a conference, it is conceivable, might produce great good if only by clearing the air of prejudice and error.

And a

For instance, there are two prejudices which seem to defy any amount of argument. The first

is the belief that the English people are not buyers of books, but that they get all their literature from the circulating library. I confess to having held this view myself until recently. Now, we have recently undertaken a little investigation, as yet inccmplete, into the present condition of the book trade, which seems to dissipate this view pretty completely. The fact is that within certain limits there are no greater buyers of books than the inhabitants of Great Britain and her colonies.

The second prejudice is based on the first. It is the error which we have attacked again and again, that publishing is a highly speculative and risky business. On the contrary, no publisher need even run any risk at all; and in point of fact very few publishers do. I have already proved this by an analysis of the advertising columns, and I shall continue, from time to time, to prove the fact in the same way.

Mr. J. M. Lely, Barrister-at-Law, and member of our Committee, has completed a popular analysis of the new Copyright Bill, with explanations of the clauses and their bearing. We have arranged with him to add this pamphlet to our list of publications. It will therefore be accessible to members of the Society at the cost of 1s. 6d.

The following note may possibly have been sent to many other readers of this paper :—

"SIR, I am collecting the opinions of men eminent in the various departments of Art and Science on the question, 'Is Life Worth Living?' and should esteem it a very great favour if you would kindly send me a few lines, giving your opinion on the matter."

Nobody should take any notice of such conmunications as the above. If the writer is really desirous of finding out what the person addressed thinks on any subject, he should consult the published works of that person. If, as is most likely, he wants an autograph, or if he is only trying to "draw" the man, he should certainly be snubbed with silence.

People in the literary line mostly know other people who are not. They also know young people who would like to be. They are, therefore, earnestly and urgently entreated and implored to

spread abroad the following simple truths :—

1. MSS. must not be sent to literary people with a request that they will read them and write an opinion. They really must not.

2. Authors must not be asked to "use their powerful influence" with publishers. They have no influence. If the best author in the world were to kneel and supplicate the most friendly publisher in the world, he would not persuade that publisher to issue unsaleable work.

In a certain secondhand bookshop where there are generally things worth seeing, there is now to be seen, nearly complete, a collection quite unique of its kind. They have had the same book bound by all the best bookbinders in Europe, each in his own best style. The result is a collection illustrating the finest kinds of binding procurable at this time. When it is complete it will be exhibited either in the shop or in some more public place. There will be various opinions on the various bindings for my own part, I think that we can hold our own in London. The book chosen is the "Water Babies," but of course it is not half good enough for such binding. One can picture the poet gazing in despair upon this work, and wondering in sadness whether he will ever be able to write up to such a binding.

Mr. Rider Haggard on his arrival in New York, was interviewed. He cannot escape the common lot. But he seems to have suffered more than is usual at the hands of his persecutors. Eight or ten newspaper men surrounded him and all asked him. questions at once. The following are selected by the New York Times as specimens of the interrogatory. The interview took place, it must be remembered, immediately after landing.

"How do you like New York?"

"Where are you going to when you leave here, and what for?"

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"How about Rudyard Kipling and India?" "Do you consider that Kipling has exhausted India?"

"How do you work? Dictate it? Work nights ?"

"Do you make your plots before you write your stories, or do you write your stories first?"

The last question reminds one of the inquirer who asked the cook whether she made her puddings first and boiled them afterwards, or whether she boiled them first, and made them afterwards. It also reminds one of King George the Third's difficulty about the apple dumpling.

Many are the writers who send their MSS. for perusal by busy men. Few indeed are so considerate as the one who sent me the other day a

letter, asking me to read his work, and in order to save trouble, enclosed a letter of refusal for my signature. signature. This letter I subjoin as an example to all other young men and maidens who want to get their MSS. read. May one remind them that one never hears of young students, say in mathematics, inviting a mathematician to teach them by correspondence? The letter is everything that could be desired.

London, February, 1891.

SIR, I have received your letter, but I must decline, though reluctantly, to entertain the application. It would give me great pleasure to assist any worthy aspirant to literary honours, but the many demands upon my time forbid me to comply with all requests of this kind, of which I receive many. In fact, I strongly advise you not to subscribe to a ticket in the literary lottery, for it offers few prizes and many blanks, and especially is the department of poetry open to this objection. With every hope for your success if you should persist in your endeavours,

I beg to remain, yours faithfully,

The ten years' Retrospect of American Literature noticed below may be supplemented by a reference to a new periodical issued by Mr. Edward Arnold, publisher, of Warwick Square. It is a monthly list of American and French books. The selected list of American books published during the last quarter is not very attractive. One would suggest that such a work as "Our Early Presidents, their Wives and Children," hardly appeals to the Englishman, to whom the past Presidents of the United States are mere names and shadows. The Notes and Notices are very meagre. A list of "Standard" American Literature includes, like the selected list, a great quantity of work that can never be popular here, e.g., the biographies of American statesmen, books on the Civil War, &c. It is curious to note when one passes from American to French literature how much broader

is the field of letters. We do not find Frenchmen occupying their time with lives of men or histories of places whose interest is purely local and ephemeral. There is the note of world-wide and human interest in a French list which is strangely absent from the American literature-perhaps also though in less degree, from our own. The first number of the "List" will doubtless be improved upon, as the editor enlarges his experience. It should, however, fill a gap in the service of current literature.

The death is announced of Alice Brontë, sister of Patrick Brontë, and aunt to the three Brontë girls. She was ninety-five years of age and was never married. I have just seen a photograph of her, taken shortly before her death. The face singularly reminds one of Charlotte, though Alice was, in her youth, a most beautiful girl, which, I fear, was never the case with any of her nieces. She was six feet high, as strong as any three men. and possessed all her faculties to the very end. The Rev. Dr. William Wright, of the Bible Society, who knew her well, is about to write a

short account of her. She lived all her years in

the North of Ireland.

Who would have dreamed that there would be living an ancient lady, the survivor of the generation before Charlotte, Emily and Anne ? The three sisters were born in the years 1816, 1818 and 1820, respectively. Charlotte died at thirty-nine, her two sisters at thirty. They might all three be living still, old, but not so very old, and youthful, compared with Alice. What sort of work would they have done had they lived? I think that one remembers "Shirley" with greater readiness than any other of the Brontë novels. Perhaps their works have been partly kept alive by the biography of Mrs. Gaskell, certainly one of the best and most life-like portraits ever drawn. The world was touched with the picture of the three girls in their far-off country. parsonage close to the wild moor, with neither neighbours nor friends, with a morose father and a drunken brother. "Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" would have lived, I suppose, whether Mrs. Gaskell had written that book or not, but they would not have lived with a vitality so intense.

My opinion as to the fading vitality of certain writers mentioned in the last number of the Author, has been disputed in various quarters. Yet I adhere to my opinion. We may reprint Hogg, and we may put him on our shelves, but we have ceased to read him in the sense in which we read Browning; we look at him sometimes for curiosity, or we may seek out favourite pieces, but he is no longer a poet of our time, or of all time. Scholars and students, of course, will read all the writers whom I named-has not Mr. Saintsbury made a book about them? Yet, they no longer attract the omnivorous young-which is a very good and fair test of vitality-and their best things are in the Anthologies and Golden Treasuries.

WALTER BESANT.

T

"IONICA."

HE question whether good verse can still become popular might be practically answered by the success or the failure of "Ionica." Rarely, indeed, does a volume of verses appear in which the workmanship is so delicate, the thought so refined, the phrases so subtle, the flow and ring of the lines so full of music. The book, a dainty volume, is published by Mr. George Allen of Bell Court, beside the Inns of Court, at the Sign of the Ruskin Arms. The song printed below, by permission of the author, is written for Mendelssohn's music generally known as "O wert thou in the cauld, cauld blast ?"

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and Bancroft, while the surviving leaders, Holmes, Whittier, Whitman, and Lowell, have passed into more or less complete retirement. The loss of leaders has not yet been replaced. In America, as everywhere else, there is a lack of acknowledged leaders; the general standard has been greatly raised; the number of those who write has been largely increased-never have there been so many writers able to write well-but those who used to dominate the literary world hardly exist any longer.

In poetry, the total disappearance of the first rank is especially deplored. There have been published during the last decade, verses from Lowell, Holmes, Whittier, Stoddard, W. W. Story, William Winter, and Aldrich, names all known to English readers. In addition, the names are mentioned of Edgar Fawcett, Francis Saltus, George Woodberry, Richard Gilder, Mrs. Whitney, Mrs. Deland, Edith Thompson, Mrs. Moulton (a head and shoulders above most of those enumerated), H. B. Carpenter, S. H. Nichol, Mrs. Jackson, E. R. Sill, Miss Dickenson, Emma Lazarus, Sydney Lanier, H. C. Bunner, Edward Martin, Herbert Nurse, F. D. Newman, and Clinton Scollard, called the best of the younger men. Now of these twenty minor poets there are three names-Mrs. Moulton, Sydney Lanier, and Emma Lazaruswhose verses are known in this country. Would it not be well if some of our critics would make a voyage of discovery in this land of sweet singers and bring home some of their songs? And would it be possible to make so long a list of minor poets in this country?

The

It is in fiction, however, that the emotion and thought of the time have in America, as everywhere, found adequate expression. Democracy, becoming self-conscious, has felt ever-increasing interest in familiar human life. The growth of the sentiment of sympathy has stimulated curiosity and interest in the daily lives of our neighbours. scientific spirit of the day has popularized the love of accurate description. The great Russian novelists have moved some and the French school has moved others. There is an enormous demand for short stories in papers and magazines, particularly such stories as those on phases in American life. We know the names that come first in such a list-Howells and James. Besides these are mentioned as in the same line, Fawcett, Mrs. Burnett, and Miss Baylor.

There has been an especially noteworthy development in the direction of local colour and local types. Some of the works of this kind we know, others are not familiar to us. For instance, Louisiana has George Cable; Tennessee, Miss Murfill; the hill folk of Virginia, Miss Baylor

and Edward Eggleston; Georgia, Johnston's Dukesborough stories; the negroes, Harris, Nelson Page, and Edwards; Kansas, Howe; New England, Miss Williams and Miss Jewett ; the Cape Cod folk, Miss McLean; the Jews of New York, Henry Harland; the Western boy, Mark Twain. Considering that all this is the outcome of ten years, the advance seems very remarkable.

Then there are books which are successful, one knows not why, such as Wallace's "Ben Hur, a Tale of the Christ"; which are successful, one does know why, such as "Mr. Barnes of New York"; which are successful because they deal with questions of the day, such as "John Ward, Preacher," and "Looking Backward"; which are successful because they appeal to serious and common-place people who understand nothing but calmly moving stories with a happy ending.

The spirit of Thoreau is continued by John Burroughs, Dr. C. C. Abbott, Theodore Roosevelt, and Mrs. Custer, while Lufcadic Hearn's "Two Years in the French West Indies" is spoken of with the highest praise.

Reminiscence and biography are plentifully represented by the names of Grant, Sheridan, Sherman, Jefferson Davis, Hugh McCullock, Blaine, by the lives of Lincoln, Emerson, Longfellow, Bryant, Molley, Hawthorne, Poe, Dana, Garrison, Agassiz, Ericsen, Henry Ward Beecher, and others.

If

In history the last ten years show the completion. of Bancroft-Parkman's "Montcalm and Wolfe," McMaster's "History of the People," and other works. Let us pass over political economy, literary criticism, art criticism, philosophy, law, education, and science. Enough has been said to show what we are too ready to forget, or to ignore, that there exists across the Atlantic a literature which is comparable with our own in every respect. they have no poets who can stand beside Tennyson, Browning, or Swinburne; if they have no novelists in the same line with Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, George Meredith; they have many who can meet the novelists who come after these. great names. If they have no historian who can be ranked with Stubbs, Green, or Freeman, they have many who are equal to those who stand in the second line, while in science and philosophy they are rapidly stepping to the front. One branch is unnoticed by the reviewer of this decade. It is the branch of scholarship. In that department Great Britain still seems to hold her own. Meanwhile, as an unexpected record of unexampled development, this little paper in the Critic, from which we have taken these remarks, is instructive and suggestive.

It suggests, especially, this very important fact. With the enormous development of their own literature it will become increasingly rare for the Americans to want the new books of our production. When, if ever, an International Copyright Bill is passed, those fortunate authors, American or British, who are in demand on both sides, will be few indeed. It will be mortifying when we have got all we have clamoured for to be told that our wares are not wanted. But this seems quite likely to happen.

HOW WE LOST THE BOOK OF JASHER.

E

VERYONE who knows anything about art, archæology, or science has heard of the famous FitzTaylor Museum at Oxbridge. And even outsiders who care for none of these things have heard of the quarrels and internal dissensions that have, from time to time, disturbed that academic calm which ought to reign within the walls of a museum. The illustrious founder, to whose munificence we owe this justly famous institution, provided in his will for the support of four curators, who were to govern the two separate departments of science and art, and the University has been in the habit of making grants of money from time to time to these separate departments for the acquisition of scientific or archæological curiosities and MSS. I suppose there was something wrong in the system, but whatever it may be it led to those notorious jealousies and disputes. At the time I am writing the principal curators of the art section were Professor Girdelstone and Mr. Monteagle, of Princes College, while I myself looked after the scientific welfare of the museum with Lowestoft as my understudy—he was practically a nonenity, but an authority on lepidoptera. Now whenever a grant was made to the left wing of the building, as I call it, I always used to say that science was being sacrificed to archæology. I mocked at the illuminated MSS. over which Girdelstone grew enthusiastic and the musty theological folios which Monteagle had purchased. They heaped abuse upon me, of course, when my turn came, and cracked many a quip on my splendid skeleton of the ichthyosaurus, the only known specimen from Greenland. At one time the strife broke into print, and the London press animadverted on Our

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There came a day when we took the advice of the press, and from then until now science and art have gone hand in hand at the University of Oxbridge. How the breach was healed forms the subject of the present leaf from my memoir.

America, it has been wisely said, is the great land of fraud. It is the Egypt of the modern world. From America came spiritualists, from America bogus goods, cheap ideas and pirated editions, and from America, I have every reason to believe, came Dr. Groschen. It is true that he spoke American with an English accent at times, at others, English with a German. But if his ancestors came from the Rhine, that he received his education on the other side of the Atlantic I have no doubt. Why he came to Oxbridge I cannot say. He appeared quite suddenly, like a comet. He brought introductions from various parts of the world, from the English embassy at Constantinople, from the British and German Schools of Archæology at Athens, from certain French Egyptologists at Alexandria, and a holograph letter from Archbishop Sarpedon, Patriarch of Hermaphroditopolis, Curator of the MSS. in the monastery of St. Basil, at Mount Olympus. It was this last that endeared him, I believe, to the High Church party in Oxbridge. Dr. Groschen was already the talk of the University, the lion of the hour, before I met him, and there was already a rumour of an honorary degree before I even saw him in the flesh, at the high table of my college, as guest of the Master. If Dr. Groschen did not inspire me with any confidence, I cannot say that he excited any feeling of distrust. He was a small, blond, commonplace looking little man, very neat in his attire, without the alchemical look of most archeologists. Had I known then, as I know now, that he presented his first credentials to Professor Girdelstone, I might have suspected him. Of course I took it for granted they were friends. When the University was ringing with praises of the generosity of Dr. Groschen in transferring his splendid collection of Greek inscriptions to the FitzTaylor Museum, I rejoiced; the next grant would be devoted to science, in consideration of the already crowded galleries of the Art and Archæology section. I only pitied the fatuity of the authorities for being grateful. Dr. Groschen had now wound himself into everybody's good

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