Show rrr a r r I r c 4 it L jv LU tt J j I1 7 I1 r I iAr TJ VtSy BfEiif L I I I Ij L Ii fii 111 I I The war poets in England arc ovi dcntly not all able to dispose of tholr products at KlplingUo rates Says the Westminster Gazette November 10th An Interesting1 offer comes Co us thTs morning from Tooting SlrAm offering of-fering war ballads at 7s Cd each Asking Ask-ing your kind Judgment But the poet is several days behind the fair I Now that the major poets write poems that are ostentatiously proclaimed to be Not Copyright why should we pay con so moderate a sum as 7s Cd for a war ballad 1 r > P The autograph ISIS of Robert Burnss Five Carlins A Scots Ballad Bal-lad has Just been sold in London It extends to four pages folio and contains con-tains In three of the stanzas some curious variations from the text as printed In Cunninghams edition A 7 short letter said to be the last bu tone t-one written by the poet was disposed of at the same s leI le-I A Burns Bibliography the work of tho late Mr W C Angus of Glasgow Is soon to be published Mr Angus was said to be the owner of the Jlncst library In existence of Burns editions p many of them unlruo and of works connected with the poet wo I A recent letter tQ the Athenaeum by IIi J G Frazer author of The Golden Bough and the new monumental monu-mental edition of Pausunlas should be printed on durable paper and sown broadcast among the authors of the world It relates to a certain recondite recon-dite matter touched upon by Mr Fra cotf In hla Pausanlas 11e ventured to refer to another writers contribution contribu-tion to the literature of the subject nnd pointed out what he considered to I be errors In that gentlemans work Now Mr Fraxer has found that the other author was right and that furthermore fur-thermore 1 his own text piled blunder upon blunder With sheet and caudle he deplores his misconduct owns that he was hasty and negligent asks every bodys pardon and promises I never to do It again The reader naturally asks i What else could lie do Well there f are authors who could shaw him 1 TJioy could show him how to gloss over r Ills blunder how to suggest that the jyrlter whom he had criticised had art ar-t l all given him some ause for misapprehension IIi I-Ii apprehension finally they could have shown him how to present the whole matter In a light far more favorable than otherwise to himself No one wjio followa the literary I I controversies of the day can doubt the ability of many of the debaters to give such a Jesson as thit which we Indicate But aomehow Mr FraxT seems to us to teach tho best lesson of all leaving us more than ever appreciative of him and his orIcN Y Tribune too l A man wearing a faded brown suit and a hectic flush came Into this fiction bazar last Friday toward evening Are you one of the literary carpenters carpen-ters around here ho asked I confessed lie drew a soiled bit of paper from hlB pocket r I got a short poem here he said Whatll you glmmo for it 1 readthe poem Ten cents I replied lie looked startled Its pretty cheap he offered Ubutglve It f me I fltl the money for a few Christmas I gifts I Intend f buy jThlH then Is the poem I JVInklc Twinkle little star TloUo upon a Mcctrlc car I Can It ran cleur oft the track And Twinkle asked bur nickel back I I J Was It worth any more Kenneth iTerfcrd in the Detroit Free Press M S 1 The Blbllotboquo Natlonalc at Paris is fortunate In coming Into possession of the ntagnlllcent collection of Orlon tat manuscripts amassed by 1 M Shefer which is I perhaps without a rival in P uroIe u It Is I said that only 20000 was y jjuiu lor me JUt volumes containing tho frulu of thin eminent scholars I fifty years work In Egypt Syria Turkey Tur-key Persia and India I P s The late Archbishop of Canterburys favorite authors were Virgil Shakts poaru and Dante poets whom he put jon a pinnacle by themselves as not quite human almost angels He wits fond too of Mr Henry JaniCBn books t find once quoted from Roderick Ilttd Hon In a unverslty sermon lie liked I MlBS Auston but thought Dickens vul gar and Thackeray cynical Charlotte Bronte ho regarded as a decided genius S S P I thirty two years have elapsed since Murk Twain published Tho Jumping I Frog in California Two years later 4111 captivated the reading public of two hemispheres with The Innocents Abroad Now he Is In London1 superIntending super-Intending the publication of a collected I edition of hiM works For the first I time his real name Samuel L Clemen appears on the title pages with tho more familiar nom de plumo In brackets p brack-ets The fact that Marie Twain for all hlH tremendous popularity and although al-though ho was himself a publisher doing 1 do-ing a very large business has not been collected until now Is of some significance signi-ficance Stevenson has come up und tiled within that period hut his collected col-lected works were In course of publication J publi-cation within his lifetime Kipling is j collected In so many Independent odl lions that his complete works are a drug in the market BarrIe Is 1 also col I Kctod Kipling wWs in awadding clothes und Barrle wn In the Knickerbocker p stage of hlH career when Mark Twain was producing imperishable humor I whoHo frcahnosrt after twentyfive years I awoke tho onthUHlnxm of Klnllnff The circumstance suggests u HlgiiU1ennt fJI query OB to whether tho younger men 1 in literature are not dolziK their principal 11 princi-pal work at nn earlier ago than the A writers of a preceding Bcueratlon IT i Barrio IH a ijloiv worker and tho public I I pub-lic has waited two year for hi sequel if to Sentimental Tommy We shall 3 soon know whether he has ben able to I Kirctnin the character Opinions of KIpllnKs latest work differ so radically I I that no disagreement of critics WIlS I 1 tver more extreme At least the fresh Ii mcsa and originality of his earlier I i stories is not to bo found in the lator II B r ArtorlS This ncrw edition of Mark I I Twain has the autlioi s doublebarreled signature In every volume Philadelphia Philadel-phia PressMen Press-Men say that Venus winked on high a deeper nectar quailing That Phoebus westward driving sang prophetic sang though laughing The Olympian divinities winked and laughed In tho poem for a very romantic ro-mantic rpason but we wonder 1C their mirth would not be excited by the spectacle spec-tacle of dozens of authors little and big all solemnly responding to the request re-quest of an editor for an intimation as Ito Ito I-to the two books which have pleased I and Interested them most duilng 1890 Certainly If this does not constitute what has been designated as a certain kind of a show for gods and men then we do not know such a show when we Ace It The whole scheme Is prodigiously prodig-iously quaint Only two books It will be observed aro to be named a number subtly eloquent of what the editor thinks of tho reading proclivities of his complaisant wellktiown men and women wo-men of his dubious belief in the capacity ca-pacity of contemporary authors to leave Ian I-an impression on their readers and Hnally of his adamantine convictions 1 touching the great piessurc on our columns and the consequent limitation of the space at our disposal for nonsense non-sense of Ibis sort With exquisite discernment dis-cernment too he sends most of his inquiries in-quiries to persons who are themselves authors Query Is it the purpose of such a symposium as this one to discover dis-cover the tastes of literary men or to ascertain wh t books have most deserved de-served to get themselves read We cannot guess In fact the secret of the business is whelmed in Cimmerian darkness All we can do is to gaze and manel New York Tribune S P P The best of English parodlsts is Owen Seaman and he finds fair game In Alfred Al-fred Austin George Meredith Hall Calne Richard Le Galllcnnc and others of the British writing crew Sir Lewis Morris t thor of The Epic of Hades irreverently i known to certain carping critics as The Hades of an Epic having hav-ing expressed the opinion that laughter wus dying out Mr Seaman wrote a threnodY The Plaint of Dying Humor Hu-mor in Imitation ofCalverly The following are the opening stanzas I know not what tho cause should bo That Humor molts my heart no more That nothing now Induces rro To roar In days of old my waistcoat heaved Conjointly with my heaving chest As soon as over I perceived A JcsL The simple pun the patent wheeze Would make mo take In tho diaphragm But now I hardly l caro for thcso A cent I almost arI know not why Thai Laughters font has been mislaid I could not giggle npt If I Was paid And yet my health Is very fair 1 harbor no religious doubts And am but sixtyfour or thereabouts there-abouts Il rIme was when I and others laughed When ninny on apoplectic fit Was traced directly to a shaft Of wit For such would find tho harnessJoint And plcrco tho vulvorable spot Whether they chanced to havo a point Or noL a P THE BOOKS OF THE YEAR Nothing more forcibly Illustrates the chief characteristic of the literary year than the January Bookmans list of the six bestselling books during the last month Every one of tho six Is by 1 an American author If memory serves aright this Is something that has never happened before It Is a remarkable llluntratioii of the gradual but sure Ut emry growth of the United Stales It Indicates that In due time wo shall wrest tho literary supremacy from England just as we have taken tho ilnanclal supremacy When the reading public of the United States began the year JSOO It was most wldel Interested in six books of which four were by Englishmen and two by American authors Even this proportion was unusually liberal to the Americans The two American books wore by Thomas Nelson Page and Dr Weir Mitchell At the close of the year the favorites arc Mr Fords Janice Meredith Winston Churchills Richard Rich-ard Carvel Mr Majors When Knighthood Was In Flower Mr West I cotls David Ilarum Marion Craw I fords Via Crucls and Mr Dunnes latest volume on Dooley The list has varied somewhat from month to month but this final half dozen Is fairly representative repre-sentative of the years new reading matter No C 1 John Street wa widely wide-ly read oiL time and Kiplings Days Work was prominent throughout the rflrst half of the year But the whole trend of the year has been toward American worksrnot because they were written by Americans but because they were the best expressions of the prevailing literary tastes The six books now In the ascendency will com j I pare favorably both In originality and In literary tlnlsh with any similar list furnished In years past by transAt lantlc authors American colonial romances have forBorne for-Borne years been gaining In popularity and the fact that Janice Meredith and Richard Carvel now head the list shows that this vein has not yet been worked out Either of these Is as line an example of the modern historical his-torical romance as the best living I authors In other countries could produce pro-duce It IB also a matter of remark 1 I thRt four of thu six favorites are histo neal novels leaving only David Harum rLnd Mr Dooley to do tho honors for other kinds of fiction Both these gentlemen arc unique each In hlR way but tho charm of both Is a piqimnt cdmblnaOon of humor and homely common uenae The group asa as-a whole Knows remarkably healthy tastes as well as a newborn power on the part of American writers to cater to th we tastes Probably the years total product will surpawi nil records In the number of books published In English There has be l MI A trnm n lous amount of m dlocrt > matter > ct the avtrauuhas bln much L f 0 I higher than It was in 1S9S The major part of the fiction of the year has been clean and strong and cheerful TJO morbid tendencies of a few years ago seem to have culminated In a revulsion dating from Jude the Obscure and the passion for cheerful and lively romance ro-mance has held Increasing sway ever since Popular taste seems now to have drifted away from the moro purely Imaginary Im-aginary romance typified In The Prisoner Pris-oner of Zenda and to have turned chiefly to historical romance The rather mild support given to Egerton Castles excellent Young April and to Anthony Hopes equally good Kings Mirror Indicates this as docs also the somewhat unexpected popularity Of Marion Crawfords strictly historical novel of thc crusades Via Crucls The failure of When Knighthood Was in Flower to catch the public taste at first has been strikingly compensated compen-sated for in Die last years rush for delicately deli-cately wrought historical romances The year has had its full share of notes worthy literary events In other lines The letters of Stevenson the life of Mlllals and a new biography of Thackeray are recent Instances In point The appearance of Goldwln Smiths history of The United Kingdom King-dom Is as Important as any other ovent In tho literal annals of ISM I Poetry has been fairly represented In Its distinctly minor way Essays and belles lettres can furnish os fine examples exam-ples of good work Issuod in 1KOD I as In any previous year But fiction holds nearly absolute sway in point of popularity popu-larity as in the past and the most encouraging en-couraging feature of HIP year just closed Is the high degree of general excellence ex-cellence in fiction and the fact that Americans are writing an increasing proportion of the best of It Chicago Tribune I |