The Literary News In winter you may reade them, ad ignem, by the fireside; and in summer, ad umbram, under some shadie tree; and therewith pass away the tedious Howres. APRIL, 1895. VOL. XVI. A New Biography of Gladstone. HENRY W. LUCY, who has written "The Right Honorable W. E. Gladstone-a Study from Life," has off and on for twenty years taken notes of Gladstone's speeches from the gallery of the House of Commons. He says in . his preface: "The obvious difficulty of writing within the limits of this volume a sketch of the career of Mr. Gladstone is the superabundance of material. The task is akin to that of a builder having had placed at his disposal ma terials for a palace, with instructions to erect a cottage residence, leaving out noth ing essential to the larger plan. I have been content. rapidly to sketch, in chronologi cal order, the main course of a phenomenally busy life, enriching the narrative wherever possible with autobiographical scraps to be found in the library of Mr. Gladstone's public speeches, supplementing it by personal notes made over a period of twenty years, during which I have had unusual opportunities of studying the subject." Mr. Lucy wrote a sketch of Gladstone in 1880, which was brought out in this country in Harper's Half-Hour Series; and in his large work, entitled 'The Diary of Two Parliaments," published in London in 1886, the second volume treat ed of the "Gladstone Parliament, 1880-1885." No. 4 From "The Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone." Copyright, 1895, by Roberts Bros. as the author of 66 Gideon Fleyce," an epoch-making political novel published in 1882. His style is delightful and his subjectthe great scholar statesman of Europe, four times Premier of the leading nation of the world-is of inexhausti ble interest. The book deals wholly with the public career of Gladstone, but is full of little personal touches, giving a fair and vivid picture of his individuality. An excellent digest of one of the most important periods of European and world history. (Roberts. $1.25.) Mr. Lucy will also be remembered The Literature of the Georgian Era AN essay in literary history which has been recently published by the Harpers may be cordially commended as a text book to American high schools and colleges. We refer to "The Literature of the Georgian Era," by the late William Minto, Professor of English Literature and Logic in the University of Aberdeen. In a treatise on logic, inductive and deductive, which the author contributed some years ago to the series of university manuals, he laid great stress upon the superiority of inductive over deductive reasoning, and he has faithfully practised what he preached in the lectures which make up the book before us. His studies differ from much work of the kind in being historical before they are critical; he has not begun by saturating his mind with what others have said upon the subject, but has gone straight to the authors themselves about whom he intended to discourse, and has read their writings thoroughly before expressing an opinion on them. By the simple expedient of refraining from speaking of any book until he had read it, he has succeeded in imparting a refreshing originality to his own composition. The general effect of his lectures is, first, to stimulate the reader to follow the lecturer's example and verify assertions for himself, and, secondly, to give him the assurance that, should he do this, he is likely to find that many current conceptions are unfounded. Thus, as regards the poetry of the Georgian era, Mr. Minto undertakes to refute a number of prevailing misconceptions; for instance, the supposed tyranny of Pope, the revolutionizing of poetry attributed to Cowper, and the alleged lack of artistic education on the part of Burns. Almost equally striking and suggestive are the lecturer's references to the various masters of English prose fiction, from Richardson and Fielding to Scott and Bulwer. (Harper. $1.50.) -The Sun. deed, left an autobiography and a diary as well as a great quantity of letters addressed to intimate friends. These materials are woven into a consecutive narrative, the source of each particular paragraph being indicated in a footnote, and without any break in the text. By this arrangement the readableness of the volume is singularly enhanced. To the question why the autobiography was not printed separately, the compiler answers by quoting a remark made by Symonds himself, that "autobiographies, written with a purpose, are likely to want atmosphere. A man, when he sits down to give an account of his own life from the point of view of art, or passion, or of a particular action, is apt to make it appear as though he were nothing but an artist, nothing but a lover, or that the action he seeks to explain was the principal event in his existence. The report has to be supplemented in order that a true portrait may be painted." Mr. Brown adds on his own account that autobiographies being written at one period of life inevitably convey the tone of that period; they are not contemporaneous evidence, and are, therefore, of inferior value to diaries and letters. The latter portray the man more truly at each moment, and progressively from moment to moment. Especial stress is properly laid upon the choice of materials and method of arrangement in the case of the biography of such a man as Symonds, which depends for its interest upon psychological development. He was a man of means, and travelled for the sake of his health, or for the accumulation of knowledge; but his journeys were not of the kind which led to external adventures. On the other hand, for a biography of the psychological order, the material is as rich and varied as the temperament of the man who created it. This is, in truth, an extraordinary book as regards the rigor of self-scrutiny, and the frankness of self-disclosure. (Scribner. 2 v., $12.50.) -The Sun. John Addington Symonds. EVERY one remembers Carlyle's saying that, if the life of any man were recounted with absolute veracity, it would be of surpassing interest from the light it would throw upon the human soul. There has been many an attempt, not counting Rousseau's, to answer the hard condition of unflinching truth-telling. The latest, and one of the most striking, is made in a biography of John Addington Symonds, compiled from his papers and correspondence by Horatio F. Brown. This book is constructed on a plan which, so far as we know, is new. It is biographical in form, but autobiographical in substance. The subject, in PROEM TO A VICTORIAN ANTHOLOGY. ENGLAND! Since Shakspere died no loftier day For thee than lights herewith a century's goal- Bore to the main; who passed the twofold marge To slumber in thy keeping: yet make room For the great Laurifer, whose chanting large And sweet shall last until our tongue's far doom. EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN, in the Century (March). America's Celebrities. PHOTOGRAPHS of well-known people have a peculiar attraction to most of us; we have, or think we have, a. better notion of the personality of a speaker, writer or statesman if we know whether he is tall or short, dark or light, bearded or smooth-shaven-if we can, in fact, form an idea of his personal as well as his mental individuality. Some two hundred and fifty of the best-known men and women of America are thus brought before us in the handsome folio volume of portraits and biographical sketches, entitled "America's Greatest Men and Women." It is essentially a picture gallery of the present, including, with but two or three exceptions-among them Frederick Douglassonly persons now living. The portraits are not restricted to a single field, as literature or science. They include men of public affairs statesmen, lawyers, writers, sculptors, soldiers, poets, clergymen, inventors, and men who have won "celebrity" by wealth or business activity. Among the writers, especially, whose "counterfeit presentments are here set forth, are W. D. Howells, Julia Ward Howe, Edward Everett Hale, Charles A. Dana, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Capt. King, T. W. Higginson, Mrs. Southworth, Kate Field, "Gath," G. W. Cable, Lew Wallace, "Octave Thanet, Richard Harding Davis, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, James Whitcomb Riley and E. C. Stedman. The portraits are "process cuts, printed on smooth, heavy paper, each portrait taking a page and being set in a broad, cream-colored border. Appended to every portrait is a short biographical sketch, summarizing the chief events in the life of its subject. The book is tastefully bound in heavy dull blue canvas, simply stamped in gilt. It is a book newspaper readers will find useful in verifying points occurring in discussions of the news of the hour. (Conkey. $4.) From "Pictures in Verse." Copyright, 1895, by G. P. Putnam's Sons. THE DESTINY-MAKER. Opium Eating and Its Effects. BECAUSE Samuel Coleridge wrote "Kubla Khan" in an opium trance, and because Thomas De Quincey has told us in a classic of English literature of the delights of visiting Covent Garden under the sublime intoxication of the poppy plant, we may, perhaps, have lost sight of the baneful influence of the drug which caused these masterpieces to come into being. If we have we may certainly be restored to more perfect sight if we look through the eyes of Mr. William Rosse Cobbe, who, in a volume entitled "Dr. Judas, a Portrayal of the Opium Habit," gives with great frankness of confession and considerable purity of diction a record of his own experiences with the drug. Indeed, one entire chapter of Mr. Cobbe's book, and many parts of other chapters, are devoted to showing that De Quincey was not only wrong in some of his statements, but distinctly unjustified in what he wrote, because he threw around the opium habit a halo of literary beauty, which has tempted many to destruction. Born under hereditary conditions which made him a nervous and easily irritated lad; being in constant peril through the war; harassed by religious doubts, and finally entering the ministry (foolishly, he says) and then taking up the profession of journalism, Mr. Cobbe easily drifted into a state where some stimulant seemed to be necessary. Suffice it to say that opium became that stimulant and that for years he was its slave. His deliverance from its thralldom caused this book to be written, and the recentness of the deliverance is what makes the book so interesting. That which will probably attract to it the attention of the unscientific reader more than anything else are the chapters devoted to the effect of the drug, especially those describing the hallucinations that follow a long-continued indulgence in it. And here it must be noticed as peculiarly interesting that Mr. Cobbe, notwithstanding his criticism of De Quincey, seems to have experienced the same adventures in his dreams. That he describes them in much the same language does not mean that he is guilty of plagiarism, but that the poppy blooms red wherever it grows, and that after all De Quincey knew what opium did even if he seemed to idealize it. largest daily dose was 320 grains of opium in the form of laudanum. The author mentions a resident of Southern Illinois, who consumed 1072 grains a day; another in the same State who contented himself with 1685 grains, and, finally, another whose daily consumption amounted to 2345 grains. Scarcely touching upon the scientific features of the habit, this book is still full of such an intimate knowledge of what can be called a disease that it should be a valuable addition to At the same time it is medical literature. general enough in its scope, and brilliant enough in its language, to make it entertaining to the ordinary reader. (Griggs. $1.50.)— Chicago Times. Maeterlinck's Plays. MAETERLINCK cannot claim greater fame on this side of the Atlantic than has been given him by allusion in newspapers or the books of other authors. As one of that school which is styled the Decadent, and which appears to include nearly all who write what may shock Mrs. Grundy, his foreign reputation has been made. "Symbolical" is the self-chosen title by which it prefers to be known, and its claim is that it concerns itself chiefly with people, and that in many cases it conceives even inanimate things as having a fictitious kind of personality. If this does not convey a clear idea of the character of the works it produces, its admirers must be blamed who have chosen so to describe it. If they had gone farther, and said that their school evinced a marked preference for the morbid and dismal, it would have more clearly defined its trend. Maeterlinck may be selected as a type of the cult. Just why he should have been called the Flemish Shakespeare, as he has been by some of his adulators, is not clear, as there appears to be absolutely nothing on which to base a resemblance, however faint, and it is time wasted to seek for similitudes. . . There is a certain charm to his work which it would be difficult to define. It lies more in his subject extended beyond reasonable bounds though his situations often are--and in that attraction which allusions to the unseen and the tread of invisible feet have for all readers of drama. This feature is beloved of Maeterlinck and is omnipresent even when it is not entirely intelligible. M. Maeterlinck discriminates very delicately. The King in "The Princess Maleine" is very different from the King in "The Seven Sisters," and both differ from the King in "Pélléas and Mélisande." As to the value of the characters, opinions may differ; but the power of conceiving and drawing is conspicuous. Published in the Green Tree Library. (Stone It would take too long to tell of the things that can be seen and heard by the opium victim, which are told of in this book, but it will certainly surprise many to learn that there are in the United States, according to Mr. Cobbe, upwards of two million victims of enslaving drugs, entirely exclusive of alcohol. Several instances are given where even De Quincey's enormous doses have been surpassed. The Englishman's & Kimball. $1.25.)—Public Opinion. |