The Portland daily press., 1879-05-02
Gossip.
Aboat Books and Authors.

The current number of the 81. Nichols con.
tains charming poem, "My Color" which
we reproduce on our fourth page. The name oil
the author will readily be recognized as that OF
a Portland lady.
A wealthy retired physician in Edinburgh
was SO charmed by Mr. Gibbons novel of
"Robin Gray That he set about making githe per-
sonal acquaintance of the writer. He was as de-
lighted with the man as with the book, and
when, short time ago he died, he left Mr..
GIBBONS a handsome legacy, with the abso-
lutte reversion OF the rest of his property at the
death of his wife, an old lady.
NJ. Zols, prolific and successful writer that
he is, seems to be nothing if not critical Few
of bis brother Dovelists have escaped the judg-
mebt of his pen, whether Of high or low de-
gree, and now he ventures TO assal the patti.
srchal Hugo in several articles contributed to
The Voltaire. Those who hold up M. Hugo
as universal genius are, he saws, his worst
enemies, and in spite of "Les Miserables,"
M. Zola affirms that the day will come when
its auIhor will be remembered only as poet
He is the most marvellous handler of words
and of rbythms the French ever had, but even
as poet he is declart to be in full decline.
He is rare and spleudid plant, now folly
ripe and in the hight of his greatness, but che
is so great that be is falling to pieces, so ripe
that his verses are falling to the ground like
fruit 10 the Autumn" NJ. Zola knows work
men who rednce their expenses for tobacco in
order to boy Hugo's books-not to read the NJ,
but 10 bind and keep them as a part of the
furniture of the best room in their homes
Frederick Harrison has old-fsshoaed no.
tions of what books people ought to rea'. In
his recent lecture on the choice of books,
printed in the current Fortnighty Rsvit W, he
remarks that it is true psychological problem
"this nausea which idle culture seems to pre-
duce for all that is manly and pure 10 heroic
poetry Walter SCOTS prose-Scott, whom
he calls "the latest perhaps 10 the series of the
worldwide aud immortal poets of the whole
human rscs"-is pronounced by the last dis
covery of modern culture to ba com % on place.
Dante, "the most profound, the most medita-
tive, the mos prophetic of all pO-ts, in Who's
epic the panorama of med8val life, OF feudsl-
ism at its best, and Christianity at ITS best,
star ds as in a microcosm, transhgured judged
and measured, in an age of steam it seems al
most idle TO speak of. Miton's Paradise Lost
with all its mighty music aud It's idy llic pic
lures of human nature" is 4 serious and un-
grateful task There are magazine articles
anouudiDg in CT aseless explanat'Ous, in more
or less readable prose, of what John Milton
meant or Old not mean, or what be saw or did
not see-indeed, we read ''a perfect library
about Paradise Lost but the Paradise Lost
itself We do not read" Homer is always fresh
and rich, but "a generation which will listen to
sPinatore' for three hundred nights, and will
read Nj. Zoa's seveDteenth romance, can no
more re ad Homer than it could read a cunei-
form inscription" People will crowd 10 see
few pots which perhaps come from Troy, but
ito Homer and the primeval type of heroic
man, in bis Geauty and his sim pleDess and Joy
ousuess the cultured generation is really dead.
as completely as some spoiled beauty of the
ball room is dead to the bloom of the heather
or the waving of the daffodils in glade.
The Managers of the American Bible Society
send Specimen Copies selected from the many
styles in which the Society is publishing Bibles
and Testaments. These volumes, considering
the price at which they are offered for sale-25
cents and cents-are probably unexcelled by
any books published.