Morning journal and courier., 1883-04-03
A Japanese Novelist.
A Lazy, Ingenious, self-Advertising, !n-
 exhaustible Author.
CFrom the Saturday Review.l

From the Saturday Rey1eW.l
 Tekasivi-Bakin, the esteemed author Of the Biography of the Eight Dogs'' Q2O volumes) ''The Story of Piece of Silk Which is Eighty Feet Long, and other we'll known works of fiction, hourished in the Middle Kingdom in the early part of the present century. According to M. Emile Guimet, to whom, with M. Felix Regamey, we are indebted for an introduction to Taka- sivi and his works, he was what the provin-
 cial journalist delights in describing as Ian
 eccentric genius" In his hot youth, ere he
 took to the production of novels, he studied natural science, as with a very different ln- tention did Balzac after him. At the same
 time he manifested his innate originality in
 manner to the western mind exceedingly i'm pressive; he was 'tres-etonne de ne pouvoir depasser les connaissances de son profes- seur." It is not clear whether this was be- cause the professor had no more to teach, or because the pupil, having assimilated cer
 tain amount of knowledge, was constitution ally incapable of assimilating any more. What is certain is that Takasivi, disheartened by his teachers superiority, abandoned sci ence and, as is the won't of such failures, became a professional man of letters. He set up a library, and, sitting therein, he wrote innumerable novels He boasts him self that he had produced as many as would fill a room; and if, like the aforementioned Biography of the Eight Dogs" which, says M Guimet, test dome comme modele dans les ecoles, they were all in 8 hundred and twenty volumes apiece, the brag must have | been well-founded. For all this, however, he was so lazy that, to save himself the trouble of leaving his desk when he wanted | to consult author for facts or dates or points of philosophy, he used to grapple with the volume from afar with long and 1 handy pair of tongs ingeniously contrived ad l hoe. His plots are complicated, and his per
 sonages are many; and in order not to get | his characters inextricably mixed-the dead | with the living, those in power with those 1 that were only in prison, the widows with
 | the maids, and the banished men with the 1 home keeping ghousehoulder-it was his habit \ to surround himself with 8 number of tiny
 dolls, appropriately attired, it may be pre- | sumed, and named after the heroes and hero
 I ines of the romance he had upon the stocks.
 When he tied a couple together he knew that
 he had married them, and that as elements | in the love interest of his story their use was l at an end. When he shut them up in 8 box, l he remembered them for dead and buried 1 and when he stuck them in corner of his chamber he could see at 8 glance that he had
 sent them on journey-that, as he had dis patched them to Nagasaki three chapters be- 1 fore, it would not be proper to talk of them as still at Yeddo. Something of the same sort is related of the gifted Ponson du Ter | rail.
 In philosophy we are told that Takasivi 1 was disciple of Confucius. As novelist, however, he was fully conscious of the value ! and importance of the Supernatural and as Supernaturalism is an essential element in the religion of Buddha, he was fond of wri ting Buddhist stories. In these he appears l to have developed the dogmas of the creed as conscientiously and relentlessly as George Eliot unfolded the theories of Positivism, or Balzac the principles and deductions of phys iology. Successful as he was, he was not I above bewailing his fortune, and apologizing for his occupation, after the manner of lite l rary men in all ages but the present. In the preface to his Story of a Piece of Silk Which is Eighty Feet Long," he confesses ! that he knows nothing worse than the trade of a man of letters. It ruins the trader s l health more quickly and thoroughly than any other; and if he is asked why, this being the case, he persists in sticking to 1t, and in add l ing volume after volume to the library TOT | which he is already responsible, his answer l is that he must either write or starve. He thinks 1t better to be half alive than alto gether dead and so, in spite of the miseries and dangers of the craft, he presents his public with the present work. The argu- ment is the argument of Grub street though | the voice is the voice of Japan It is satls- l factory to note, however, that i'll Japan, if Takasivi's apology is to be taken as typical and representative, that detestable entity, the Partial Friend, has not yet been invented After this complaint it is not surprising to discover that Takasivi not only eked out the grains of his precarious calling by the sale l of the Japanese equivalent for patent medi- cines, but actually went so far as to adver- | tise his wares in his own novels-a practice which might have brought 8 blush to the cheek of Dumas himself, great artist in an- nouncements as he was. Thus, in the 'Sto- ry of a Piece of Silk already referred to, | the heroine, the fair and hapless Okoma,
 succumbs at 8 crisis of her fortunes, and | falls into dreadful swoon. Physicians are
 in vain; every sort of remedy IS tired ana | found wanting. The afflicted sire IS in de- spair the house resounds with noise of la- l mentation and mourning and woe When | all of a sudden, just when it seemed that 1 there is no help for it, but that Okoma must 1 certainly die person appears with new and unknown specific. Tbe father takes it 1 in an agony of apprehension. If it should | fail like the others But it does not fail. l Its effect is immediate and triumphant Okoma is restored to life in the twinkling of an eye and Takasivi concludes his chapter with three pages in praise of the mysterious | elixir, which is his own private property, which is an epitome of all medicine, must | be used in such and such 8 way, can be l bought at such and such a shop, and costs no more than so much a bottle. We have | adopted good many Japanese ideas of late. l It might be worth our while to adopt this | idea of Takasivi's
 Mary Murphy, the Greenville rag sorter, who was attacked by smallpox, died Sunday morning and had to be buried by her father
 Sunday night
 James Stoddard, well known Ledyard farmer, is lying very low with an abscess in
 his throat. He has taken no nourishment