The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1876-11-11
Literary Notes.

tellers. He is writing',a historical novel, to be
published next year.
Ternyson's new poem will soon be issued by
by j. R. Osgood & Co. 1t will appear simulta-
neously in London.
Sheldon & Co. will issue, Nov. Is, Lectures
on the History of Preaching, by John A.
Broadus, d. D., of South Carolina.
The Colorado potato bug is to be written up
In book by Prof. Charles;V. Riley, the State
Entomologist of Missouri.
The authors Of Ready Money Mortiboy, This
Son of Vulcan, etc., are discovered to be Mr..
Walter Besant and Mr. Rice, both of whom
are in this country.
Dr. John Cumming, the great millennial
preacher, it seems has postponed the millen,
MUM, in order to publish his new book
Watchman, What of the Night? reprint Of
which from the London edition, is issued by
G. w. Carleton & Co., of New York.
Frank Lee Benedict's last novel, Twixt Ham
ner and Anvil, recently published by G. W.
Carleton & Co, is already in its sixth edition.
A new work, entitled Madame, by the same
author, is in the press. Mr.. Benedict is at
present in Spain.
COeWOCh oh A1uSuSA On al ALuoElCAu bOOh
the difference in cost is strongly exemplied
by Carleton & Co., who have just re-published
in New York for 81 80 little volume of Poems
entitled Constance's Fate, by Violet Fame, the
London edition of which is sold at $3.50.
''Flower and Thorn Mr.. Aldrichs new vol
nme of poems, will soon be published by o.
good. 1t will contain only the poems he has
written since 1865, but will include several that
have never appeared before, as we'll as those
which have already been published in maya
zines.
May Agnes Fleming, another of America s
popular women authors, publishes through
Carleton & Co. a new novel (seventh) entitled
Kate Danton. More than 100000 of this au-
thor's books have been sold in five years. Mrs.
Fleming formerly resided in St. Johns. New
Brunswick, but is now an American citizen.
Messrs. FL. o. Houghton & Co. have pub
lished for an Atlantic Monthly premium, fine
photographic portrait of William G. Bryant,
which is an excellent likeness aud finely ex-
ecuted work of art. The noble head of the
poet is like the classic conception of Homer or
Jupiter
P. T. Barnum, the great Snowman, figures
up that SO 464, 900 visitors have entered his diff
ferent museums, circuses, shows of various
sorts in this country and Europe; and his new
are Made, which Carleton & Co. publish gives
the nodus operaads for gathering together such
wonderful curiosities in Natural History.
The London Athen@um congratulates read
ers that a new run of popularity has COME to
Miss Austen's novels, from the very marked
estimation which Lord Macaulay is shown in
his Memoirs to have held them in. 1t also
declares that readers familiar with such ex-
celent models of fiction will not tolerate the
vulgar, flashy novels of the present day."
4 series of books will shortly appear in Lon
don on the subject of house decoration, and
the laws on which it should be carried out. The
first volume is to be from the pen of Rev. Mr..
Lofty, a writer for the Saturday Review, and
the second by the Misses Garrett sister and
cousin to DR.. Garrett Anderson, the most sue
cessful lady doctor in London.
Messrs. Chapel & Co. of London have in
the press and will shortly publish Medical
Hints on Production and Management of the
Voice, by Mr.. Lsnnox Browne surgeon to the
Royal Society of Mus icians. This work will
be an extension of the authors paper on The
Voice as Musical Instrument, which was one
of the most interesting of those communicated
during the last session of the Musical Asso-
citation.
The first volume of Berthold Auerbac h. y
new series of tales has appeared. He an
nounced that, as in the former series he en-
deavored to delineate the village life of an
earlier age, when of the peasantry of Germany
many passed their days in secluded districts,
far removed from the rest of the world, in the
present series of tales he aims at correct rep
resentation of the German village of railway
times. By this double group of life-pictures
he hopes to bring into strong relief the good
that Germany has secured through the changes
which the progress of time and the course of
events have wrought for the Fatherland.
1t is always interesting to know the methods
of composition used by clever writers. There
was Hawthorne, who made notes innumera-
ble-to be afterward worked into his stories
of every fitting, quaint fancy. strange recital,
or peculiar personality. Several of the most
distinguished American writers have the habit
of jotting down sentence or line or two
here and there down long page, and then fill
ing up the outline thus made with persistent
revision. Wordsworth, in composing, was
prone to slate pencil and the smooth side of
rock; Schiller sat up all night to write and
drank wine, and Walter Scott worked fasting
from five in the morning till about ten.
Lord Houghton gets criticism from the Ex-
aminer. 1t says of his poems: "They are all
far too much the carefully executed works of
cultivated English gentleman-Lord Hough
ton is, of course, highly cultivated, in some
things perhaps hyper cultvated-are all too
much in the Lines to Lady of Quality kind
of thing The suggestion of culture is kept
too palpably PROMINENTLY Turks in allusion, it
peeps up perpetually from foot.notes Apart
from this, many of the poems convey little or
no impression of any sort" Edmond About
calls Lord Houghton philosopher of the 18th
century who through some lucky caprice Of
fate has strayed into the 18th.
English criticisms of American writer's hardly
ever run parallel with ours Here is the sturdy
Examiner saying: "Walt Whitman has merits
that no American prose writer or poet ever yet
had, with virtues and strength sufficient for
claiming laureateship of the great American
nation" OF the little school of American
authoresses the Atheneum says: "The SINH
larity in style between Miss Alcott, Miss
Phelps, Mrs. Whitney and Mrs Dodge may be
due to sort OF irrepressible briskness of die
ton and their common use of a certain set of
vulgarisms; but their ideas all seem to run in
the same groove. Their chief characteristic is,
perhaps, best expressed by the word homeli-
ness, quality which, as a sort of minor virtue,
is good enough in its way, but very insufficient
as an aid to imagination" AS for Mr.. Harte's
Gabriel Conroy, the Spectator calls it pot
boiler.
The private correspondence of Honore de
Balzac with his sister and friends is about to be
published in Paris. To his sister he signs him
self ruefully, "Honore de Balzac, French poet
at two francs the page" He had various expe-
dents fer Increasing the number of hours in
the Gay and for getting the most labor out of
himself. AT one time he "went to sleep with
the fowls at six or seven o'clock in the eve.
ming; rose at one in the morning, and scrubbed
till eight; then slept for an hour and a half,
then breakfasted, and then returned to har.
ness, dired about five, ant then to bed. An
other practice of his was to sleep from one
o'clock in the day till half past six, and to write