The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1898-03-01

ANn now let us make q Slight deliV-
era L as to the most popular novel
since "Trilby," which almost all who
read nav read or are reading, ''QuO
Wallis" That literary prophet and
philosopher of New England, who
wrote some really remarkable verse,
but some deny that he was in a high
sEI2sse a poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson,
said when a new book appears read
al old one. Excellent advise, which
we often follow. Within the year we
ha VI had a fresh reading of some of
SCOTS great novels-his Scotch-and
he IS SO much more interesting than
all h most talked of latter-day fiction
writer's, that we feel it hard to be in
terested in their writings to any great
degree after sitting under the enchant-
ments of the great fictive
Scott, as Wilkie Collins once said, is
above us ALL" His only possible
rival in literature as a story teller, as
7supreme romancer, is Dumas, the elder.
Thomas Carlyle, the great intellectual
power of Scotland within the last
sixty years-and seer and poet like
Emerson, but unable to write a stanza
of real poetic verse, said, wait two
years before you read a new book"
That is wise, for in six months the
current literature about disappears,
and in two years only a nalf dozen or
sc of books Of the masterful kind sur
yiye. With most it is a tale that is
told and as soon forgotten. We think
Quo Vadis" an exception. We have
but only within d few days finished
reading it. 1t is a disappointing book
an some. important particulars. 1t is a
higher ook as to style than we antic-
dpated-clearer, terser, more vigorous
and even more brilliant. 1t is a more
led to suppose from the concurrence of
opinion as to it's unblurred excellence.
Until we took it in hand we did not
anticipate hat morally it would Of
fend. We thought it a Christian story
of the time of that incarnate devil,
Emperor Nero, and hence did not eX-
pect to find exquisitely written descrip-
tive passages of lust and impurity. IN
that disappointing particular we re-
gard Quo Vadis" as very ~censurable.
All the critical notices in leading news
papers and critical gazettes and jour-
mails have not said a word that we re-
call SO much as limiting at n displays
sof lubricity and any suggestions Of
Ehronic immortality. Never before
fave we seen vice more gilded. We
are not especially we'll read in salaci-
ols and decadent novels or poetry, but
In all our reading We do not recall
such delicacy and fascination of liter
airy dress given to lust and moral de-
PEASANT, and the other French novel
Rsts who throw o~er lechery and cor
ruptiOn the glamour of genius. Such
books are to be avoided as you would
u smallpox IN Its most violent form.
Until to-day we had not seen what
Harper's Weekly said of the novel. 1t
says that moi to have read Quo Vadis
has been to confess ones self indiffer-
qangoe 40 letters; not to admire it be-
ye.nd all the books of its year has been
TO admit incapacity to recognize merit.
No opinion is here offered as to wheth-
SIT or not the book is a masterpiece, but
As noted that the worm that the Quo
Tadis folks have trod on shows signs
OF beginning to turn" 1t then refers
10 what the Virginian in New York,
John s. Wise, said at the Princeton
dinner in that city-"that the popular