The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1902-04-01

hloidi SldIlulnR Oh some Oh Ine Rredtesi
of French authors. novelists and poets.
read this from the letter from London
of the 1st Of March from William L.
Alden. the correspondent Of the New
York Saturday Review. A Nine. De
Rute. a famous or Infamous French
woman OF advanced age died recently in
Paris. She has gifts, accomplishments,
Influence, attracted men by her charms,
founded several reviews and wrote
~"several s~candilous books" Mr.. Aid II
says of her:
Nine. De Rute. who died the other
day. was associated with literature.
That is to say. she had been in her
time the mistress of Victor Hugo. AL
fred De Musset. and Eugene Sue-not
Ito mention the names Of severai other
authors who had tender relations with
her. She was handsome. clever. and
seductive. Among her lovers were half
a dozen of the most eminent men in
Europe. ard among her Husbands. was
RatazZi. ; at one time was regarded
as the : of Italian statesmen. She
twas ut without principle"
She W rench to the core and with
mo character or morals has the boast
l0lllOil6 NHc dOlcSI III dulIlOIs
What a society! 1t reminds one of
lTaine's picture Of the court of Charles
II. of. England, after the restoration
What can be expected from vicious au-
Ithors but vicious books
{. = =
1t is a fact that the great authorsI
never received the patronage of the
present day writer's OF successfully SELL
ling fictiono. Scott and Dickens were
we'll paid, but many Of their cleverest
contemporaries eked out a small living
The Saturday Review notes that "it
is a highly significant fact that when
our literary men were o we'll paid. we
had a real and distinctive literature.
At the present time when our authors
substantial fortunes. We haveI
smart books. but there is abundant
room for reasonable doubt as TO wheth-
|er fifty years hence our contempor-l
'~aneous writers will loom so large upon
the page Of literary history as those of
fifty years ago" No one can believed
for a moment that Il contemporary
writer will have inches in the mighty
Temple of Fame with the great writersI
of the first half of the last century, orI
with the men of splendid genius of theI
shakespeare mage, the spacious timesI
of great Elizabeth" The productionsl
the present are popular, have inn
mense sales. are generally written cur
rente calamo. are stamped with
fame, and It is very doubt
if a novel written since the best of
Meredith, Blackmore. Hardy. the au-
thor of John Inglesant," Mrs. Oliphantl
and a few Others were published will
live for a quarter of a century. The
with the masters-Scott, Thackeray,
Dickens, George Eliot, Nathaniel Haw-,
thorne, by much odds the foremost oil
1ctive writer's, Charles ReadeI
C'The Cloister and the Hearth" one of
greatest English novels), and one
or two Of Anthony Trollope s stories
and some others. Some one aptly calls
fiction the drum and trum-
net chronicles" They are often sound
and fury, Sighting nothing" Who
among the living Americans can writeI
or equal the marvellous stories by Poe
or 1.-THE Twice Told Tales" of Haw-
AS to the lattsr's longer books
there is none to sit in his presence.
- !. -
Several new biographies will soon ap-I
pear. Anatole France will soon publish
his two volume Life of Joan of Are"
G. Collingwood has a new Life of
John Ruskin" just ready; r. E. Merri-
man has just finished a volume of life
md letters of Cromwell. In two or
years some hall dozen works on
the greatest British ruler have ap-
some of marked interest: A.
F.. Davidson is writing a life of the
alder Dumas, who was half negro.
the best Of the many bio
of last year were John Rich
lrd Green's Letters, Hugo's Love Let
Merwin'S Life of Jefferson,
5cudder's James Russell Lowell" w.
Green's Earl of Chatham" Bal
,our's Life of Robert Louis Stevens
on," Andrew Lang's Mary Stuart" and
lis Alfred Tennyson."
We mention a few good novels that
re we'll worth an intelligent persons at
and they are not recent either
'Cloister and Hearth. Lorna Doone,' ;
John I~nglesant.' Westward Ho,'1
Richard Feverel," THE Maid of Skey,'
Alice Lorraine" "Ravenshoe," The
Three Musketeers,' Crawford" "a
Cardinal" The Splendid|
Spur and Micah Clark" We will giveI
others at another time.