Evening Republican, Volume 14, Number 93, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1910 — BITS FOR BOOK KWORMS [ARTICLE]

BITS FOR BOOK KWORMS

Arthur Rackham’s new color book will have as its subject Wagner’* “Ring.” It is to be published In the autumn. There is to be a new biography of Dean Swift, this time written by a woman. This daring person wears the name of Sophie Smith. De Alva Stanwood Alexander is at work on a fourth volume of bis “Political History of the State of New York.” His last volume ended with the election of Grover Cleveland as Governor in 1882. „ Pragmatism having been traced to Bergson, the work of that philosopher on “Time and Free Will: an Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness" is now to be published in an English translation. John Ayscough, the author of “San Celestfno,” has won favor in the Catholic Church by this book. The pope sent him the apostolic benediction and created him Knight of the Sacred Military Order of the Holy Sepulchre, while his mother received the cross “Pro Ecclesia et rontifice” in gold. Doctors tell us that the "hair growing white in a single night” is a popular delusion. That it can do so in five years, however, is conclusively shown by two photographs in “The Autobiography of Henry M. Stanley.” One shows the author in 1885 with coal black hair and the second in 1890 with pure white hair. The intervening five years were spent largely In Africa. A book on “The Court of William III,” ty Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Drew, will shortly be published in London. The authors have been able, in preparing iti to consult the correspondence of King William with Bentinck, the founder of the Portland family. This important correspondence is iry possession of the Duke of Portland; and has only heretofore been drawn upon slightly by Macauley. Sir Olive.r Lodge, writing of “The Responsibility of Authors” in the English Fortnightly, fears that the decision of the libraries in connection with the circulation of certain books will mean a ban upon all that Is unconventional. Sir Oliver says in reference to the censorship of plays that “it £as prevailed to stop some good work; it does not avail to stop the foolish and the bad.” With some amusement Sir Oliver quotes the fact that all of Henry Fielding, that “Adam Bede,” "Jane Eyre” and Kingsley’s “Hypatia" would have been subjected to suppression by the proposed literary censorship. His conclusion is "that it is best to permit things to be said that are seriously thought,” and “that we are not going at the beginning of the twentieth century to lose the birthright of liberty at tlje dictate of any three persons however estinyjble, well meaning or able they may be.”