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I LITERARY CHAT.

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I LITERARY CHAT. Maxim Gorky wishes to include the Pope in one of his contemplated works, and with that idea went to Rome to see his Holiness. When dealing with life at sea in a novel, Mr. Clark Russell invariably has sketches of the ships he describes before him as he writes. Mr. Rudyard Kipling speaks Hindustani al- most as well as he does English. As a child he had to converse in both languages. A series of articles, entitled Mary Baker Eddy the Story of her Life, and the History of Christian Science," commences in the April issue of The Woman at Home." A new novel by Mme. Albanesi is announced. She is hard to please with her work, and though the story has appeared serially it has since been largely re-written, while the title, "The Strongest of All Things," is also new. Although 1,00,000 copies of the first number of Messrs. Cassell's new fiction magazine, "The Story Teller," were issued, they were entirely exhausted in a few days, and fresh supplies had to be rapidly prepared. Sir Percy FitzPatrick, the leader of the Pro- gressives in the Transvaal, has found leisure to write "The story of a dog," "Jcckof the Bush- veld." Sir Percy is the author of "The Trans- vaal from Within," a volume that sold greatly at the time of the war. The Baroness von Hutten was Miss Bettina Riddle, an American beauty of the stately type, before she was married to the Court Chamberlain of the King of Bavaria. Her first novels gained great popularity in America, but HPam" and its sequel have enjoyed still wider fame. The Baroness does most of her literary work at the Schloss Steinberg, her husband's ancient castle in Bavaria. The disaster which befell Mr. Upton Sin- clair's socialistic colony was a sad ending to a bold enterprise. Helicon Hall, at Englewood, New Jersey, was, from all accounts, a magnifi- cently equipped building, which lodged more than fifty people of literary and artistic tastes who were willing to join in Mr. Sinclair's co- operative scheme. Though each family had private apartments, the dining-rooms, drawing- rooms, kitchens, etc., were used in common; no servants were allowed; and the manual labour was distributed between the members of the colony. Mrs. Grace MacGowan Cooke, who was seriously injured in the explosion at the Upton Sinclair Home, is a very popular writer for American magazines, in which her pen has been busy for twenty years. She is forty-four years old, and was the first president of the Tennessee Woman's Press Club. She has a humorous style which makes all her stories very enjoy- able. Her books include "For Falstaff, He is Dead" and "A Gourd Fiddle," titles which show her original vein. 0 April 22 is the 200th anniversary of the birth- day of Henry Fielding, "Father of the English Novel," as Scott called him. The event is to be celebrated, among other ways, by a banquet of Somerset men in London, for Fielding was himself born in Somersetshire, at Sharpham Park, Glastonbury. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who has now recovered from his illness, will take the chair, and it is hoped that many literary lights will be present. When the Dickens Fellowship at Manchester visited "Cheeryble House," for the last time before its demolition, one of the company was a former employee of Messrs. Grant, the originals from whom Dickens sketched his Cheeryble Brothers. Mr. Ciompton recalled how he was j employed there in 1849, and mentioned how on y one occasion he was rushing downstairs at such j speed that he nearly collided with Mr. Daniel Grant. He looked at the eager youth, and said, "You're a very active young man; here's a sovereign for you." At her residence at Torquay, has died, at the age of seventy, Miss Wilmina Parksmith, an artist whose best illuminated work is preserved in the Rc^al Library at Windsor. She illus- trated for Queen Victoria "The Chronicles of Balmoral," and taught Princess Henry of Bat- tenberg sketching and the art of illumination, also assisting her Royal Highness in the pro- duction of Princess Beatrice's Birthday Book. The microscopic nature of her work in many of the illuminations injured Miss Park- smith's eyesight, with the unfortunate result that for the last ten years of her life she was blind. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, the American poet and humourist, who has just died at Boston in his seventy-first year, had three years in his uncle's office in New York, and in his spare hours wrote both in prose and verse with such success that at the end of them he was able to give up commerce for literature. English readers know him best by the Ballad of Babie Bell," first published in 1856, and Pru- dence Palfrey," a sketch of New England life which appeared in 1874, and placed its author in the the front rank of American humorists. Aldrich also held editorial positions on several New York journals, and was editor of the "Atlantic Monthly," in succession to Mr. W. D. Howells, from 1881 to 1890. The news that the Hon. Walter Rothschild's book on birds is nearly ready will be welcomed by all naturalists. Mr. Rothschild lives with his father at Tring Park, and there, has a wonderful museum with specimens of all the rare beasts. There is a perfect quag^a and a great auk, with two of its eggs, probably worth much o,s £ 300 tlundrG-cls of other eggs are there too; butterflies innu- I merable, strange fish, odd birds, with several of the giant tortoises which live to such an extraordinary age. One of those in the Tring museum is said to have died prematurely when he was only 250. Many interesting relics of Keats and Shelley were seen at the concert at Stafford House in aid of the memorial which it is proposed to erect at Rome. The collection included the autograph draft by Keats of the Ode to a Nightingale "—the identical draft which C. A. Brown, Keat's friend, saw him thrusting away at the back of a bookshelf; the copy of Shake- speare's poems in which Keats wrote his last sonnet-the exquisite Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art the life mask of Keats, the most authentic of portraits made by Haydn a manuscript having on one side part of Shelley's "I arise from Dreams of Thee, and on the other an Italian prayer, picked up on the shores of the Gulf of Spezzia by Cap- tain Roberts after the wreck in which Shelley was drowned some of the ashes of Shelley col- lected from the funeral pyre by Trelawney, and given by him to Claire Clairmont; the draft of "Adonais which was in Shelley's pocket when he was drowned; first editions of the poems of both poets; pictures, miniatures, the very trinket which dangled on the chain of Mary Godwin-- Shelley's wife and many other relics. Mr. Max Pemberton prefers French novels to English, as a rule, and his favourite French author is Victor Hugo. He thinks Balzac's "Cousin Belle" one of the greatest books ever written. In England he would at any time sooner take up "Pickwick" than any other novel he has read. Sir Edward Clarke is not the only great lawyer who has turned author. Mr. Justice Darling his published at least three witty volumes; Sir Alfred Wills has four books to his credit, chiefly on mountaineering; Sir Edward Fry has written on a wide range of subjects, from British mosses to Christianity; and Mr. Haldane and Mr. Birrell (to mention no others) hava been voluminous writers.

NOTES ON NEWS. -

THINGS THOUGHTFUL.

INEWS IN BRIEF. I

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