The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-06-12
LITERARY NOTES.

The German Emperor has provided funds
by formal decree for the creation of an
Egyptian dictionary, and various professors
from the German universities are to labor
upon 1t for the next eleven years.
The task of writing the biography of
Gladstone will probably fall to the lot of
John Morley. The material for the work
will be practically inexhaustible as Mr..
Gladstone preserved all correspondence and
made copies of all his own important letters.
The missives from the Queen alone number
over five hundred
Mr.. Bryce presided at the annual dinner
of the Booksellers Provident Institution,
and in proposing the toast Literature"
said that "the best test of the intellectual
level of a country was to be found in the
number and contents of the bookshops in
it's small towns" The country where the
bookshops contained the greatest abundance
and variety of literature was the United
States; and the country where they con-
tanned the greatest quantity of difficult lit
erature. addressed to persons of special
learning, was Germany.
Mr.. Temple Scott, an experienced observ-
er of the book marker, declares says the
New York Post, that the kailyards day is
over. The appetite for haggis and usque-
baugh, enormous as it was is now satisfied,
and Scotch dialect begins to pail. Ian
Maclaren seems to have been principally
responsible for bearing the >market, such an
he do. When 1t came to Volumes of SER
mons by the author of the Bonnie Brier
Bush" the too tolerant Saxon flew to arms,
and the Scotch foragers were driven over
the marches.
Mr.. Barrie in the course of an introduc-
ton to collection of stories written by the
late Mrs. Oliphant shows very becoming
modesty and taste. II wonder" he says,
IF there is among the younger Scottish
novelists of to-day any one so foolish as to
believe that he has right to stool near
this woman, any one who has not expert
enced a sense of shame (and some rage at
his hearD if he found that for the moment
his little efforts were being taken more
seriously than hers? 1 should like to lead
the simple man by the ear down the long
procession of her books
Concerning the origin of the name of one
of the most famous American presses a
pleasant little story is told 1t was in 1852
that Mr.. H. o. Houghton established his
Cambridge Press on the banks of the
Charles river in a building formerly used
for the town poor. Mr.. Houghton not lik-
ing, we are told, ito have any name attach
itself to his new press which might be sug-
geSted by the former use of the building"
sought the advice, of his friend, Mr.. James
Brown, then of the firm of Little, Brown
& Co., of Boston, who one day said to him:
This press stands by the side of the
Charles river; why not call it the Riverside
PresS?' and this most natural name was
then given 1T, so that now the term River
side has come to cover a thickly populated
district and to be applied to various neigh
boring industries.
writer in Literature says in preface
to the reviews of some recent novels: 1.-The
arts would be greatly benefited if some in
genious critic would give us the aesthetic
of the ugly and the horrible. The ugly, the
horrible, the terrible are no doubt fit sub
JectS for the writer, but their treatment
must justify the artists choice. Mere ugi-
ness, mere horror are inadmissible. de-
scrlptlon or a h1deous slum; for example, is
formed the squalid stones and the squalid
lives with some significance; and even in
the motive of his ape story-is artstically
failure. But the special axiom that the
terrible event, the ugly incident are useless
artist, is merely an application of the gen.
eral principle that all art is concerned, not
with particulars, but with universals."