The Publishers' Weekly finds the spring outlook for 1891 to be considerably more encouraging than for many years.

The Chautauquan's valuable series of "Practical Talks on Writing English," by Professor William Minto, of the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, is continued in the May number by some very helpful hints on the use of figurative language, irony, innuendo, and epigram.

T. A. Trollope once planned, wrote, and sold a two-volume novel, the MS. amounting to 500 post 8vo pages, in twenty-four days. Fleet street still echoes with legends of the journalistic performances against time of William Black and Sir Edwin Arnold, and everybody knows the rapid rate at which Scott, the elder Dumas, and Anthony Trollope produced their fiction. But these great names, according to Cassell's Saturday Journal, so far as rate of production is concerned, must bow before that of the redoubtable Ned Buntline. This American author of between 300 and 400 novels and sketches once earned in six weeks by hard writing $11,500. We do not wish, says the London Speaker, to snatch the palm from Ned Buntline in the matter of rapidity among modern writers, but as far as remuneration is concerned his $11,500 for six weeks' work does not beat the record of over $40,000 paid to Scott for "Woodstock," the work of three months.

Concerning the idea that literature in the eigh teenth century was an unappreciated and poorlypaid employment, Walter Besant, in a causerie "Over Johnson's Grave," to appear in Harper's Magazine for May, says: "The much-abused 'booksellers' of the day have, I think, had scant justice done them, when we consider the wretched stuff they published and paid for. One thing is greatly to their credit: they always did pay everybody whose work they produced, even if they paid him little. There are publishers at the present day who do not obey that golden rule. Goldsmith is said to have made in one year as much as £1,800. Johnson bargained for £1,575 for his Dictionary; he did in reality get more, but he had to pay his assistants, and the work was spread over seven years. For the 'Lives of the Poets' he himself asked two hundred guineas, which was probably much less than he might have asked and obtained. Dyer, for instance, received £200 for his revision of Plutarch; and Hawkesworth is said by Hawkins (but one cannot possibly believe it) to have received £6,000 for his account of the South Sea Discoveries. Johnson had worked so long at low prices that he knew not his true value."

Mrs. Humphry Ward is now engaged in writing the latter portions of her new novel, which will be published in the fall. She has chosen a one-word title for the story, "David." The story will be a very long one, and it may fill two volumes.

Gustav Freytag, the German novelist, who is seventy-five years old, was lately married to Madame Strakosch.

Mrs. Amelia E. Barr has taken a cottage on Orange street, Orange, N. J., to rest, having completed a Scotch romance, entitled "A Sister to Esau," which she has sold to the New York Ledger for $2,500.

Miss N. Leila Michel, of Buffalo, N. Y., a member of the editorial staff of the Magazine of Poetry and Twentieth Century Review, is in Washington collecting material for a book to contain the biographies of 1,000 noted American women.

Frank D. Stockton was invited to dinner in Washington some days ago by an artful hostess, who had the ices served in the form of a lady and a tiger. "Now, which?" she coolly asked, when they came on. "Both, if you please," he replied; and the problem is still unsolved.

The recent death of Alexander Young, the "Taverner" of the Boston Post and Boston correspondent of the Critic, removed one who adorned the literary and social circles of his native city. Mr. Young was born in Boston May 19, 1836, and was the son of Rev. Alexander Young, D. D. He was graduated from the Harvard Law School in 1862. Literature, however, was his profession, and he made important contributions to many journals and magazines.

Mrs. Julia McNair Wright has written a Danish novel,-"Frü Dagmar's Son,”-a copy of which is being sent to the Queen of Denmark. The copy is bound in white corded and watered silk; the corners are rounded, the edges of the cover beaded in gold, the edges of the leaves heavily gilt. The title is set diagonally across the upper part of the front cover, and below are the Danish arms royal, hand painted. The monogram of the National Temperance Society is on the centre of the other cover, and "Wright" in gold script is on the back. The fly leaves and lining of cover are of white silk. The book is inclosed in a heavy box of white enamel, lined with puffed white silk, and closed with a clasp. Mrs. Wright is a busy woman, and while she was writing of "Frü Dagmar's Son," and doing work for an educational series, she won the New York Observer's first prize for short stories. Her home is in Fulton, Mo.

CHARLES G. D. ROBERTS.

HOW ONE SERIAL WRITER WORKS. Edward W. Bok.
TYPEWRITER OR PEN? Margaret Hamm.
FICTION AND DOMESTIC MISERY.

BREVITY IN FICTION.

Helen Jay.

Frederic M. Bird.

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A few days ago I had occasion to go to a little bookstore in Windsor, one of the country towns of Nova Scotia, and there, standing before one of the counters, wrapping and sealing up some books, stood a tall, athletic-looking man, not more than forty years of age. Behind the spectacles which he wears, you could see a pair of bright brown eyes, a strong face, with prominent features, crowned with a head of dark hair. Altogether he was a fine-looking man, but not handsome. It was the poet, Charles G. D. Roberts, or, as we in Nova Scotia more commonly speak of him, Professor Roberts.

All the members of the Roberts family are of a poetic turn of mind, but Charles has out

At present King's College, of Windsor, the oldest chartered college in Canada, belonging to the Church of England, holds Roberts as professor of modern languages. He is president of the Haliburton Club of that institution, which is said to hold its meetings in the room occupied by Judge Haliburton when a student at King's.

For some time Professor Roberts has been writing both prose and poetry; and not long ago a small volume of poems, "In Divers Tones," appeared; and often in American magazines you will come across some of his writings. The books he was preparing to mail, when I saw him, were copies of a translation of his from the French, by Gaspé, called "The Canadians of Old," which is highly spoken of by the critics. At present Longmans, Green,

& Co. have in their hands a volume of his for publication.

When the Canterbury Poets Series was to be published in London, Roberts was appointed one of the editors. He is, as his writings show, truly a Canadian. He writes of the dykes and marshes, as in "Tautramar," of the creeks and beaches, as in "The Creek," and of the ebb. and flow of tides. Dr. Rand, of McMaster University, says of him: "He received much of his inspiration from his familiarity with the Greek poets; and some of his writings resemble those of Keats. The melody of Swinburne is apparent in his lines; and the influence of

Shelley can also be noticed. He is a master of sonnets, of which 'The Sower' is worthy to rank in English literature."

Many consider Roberts to be Canada's first poet, others think Carmen should hold that place, and, again, there are those who would that Archibald Lampman should receive the laurel wreath; but listen to what Matthew Richey Knight, editor of the Canada, says in his sonnet, "Our Poets":

There, side by side, upon my desk they dwell:
Roberts, whose touch makes beautiful; and he,
Carmen, who sees and loves all mystery;
And Lampman, Fantasy's son; Duvar, whose spell
Is like the choir of birds. I cannot tell
Which I love best; in his own light I see
Each, and for his own charm he pleaseth me;
I love none best, I love them all so well.

Which shall be first? I am not skilled to place
Each in his rank; but why should any lead?
Each has his several note, his several grace;
Faithful to that, he earns the proper meed.
If with no mask he covers his own face,
His rank is absolute to all who read.

NOVA SCOTIA.

Sidonie Zilla.

town, and affects the morals and manners of the entire community. And more: its influence stretches out into the whole country, wherever its readers may chance to go; and its importance is not for a moment to be compared with the entire sum of the mercantile and manufacturing interests by which it is surrounded. A town with a library can be distinguished easily from one which lacks any such collection of books; and those parts of the country in which town libraries abound are the parts which are most influential in every department of intellectual, and even material, labor."

To those of us who for the greater part of the year are stalled within the narrow confines of a sequestered village or dapper little town the library is indispensable.

What comfort it is when actually "snow bound," like Whittier's good family, to have the companionship of the delightful guests to whom our library introduces us. How eagerly we look forward, month after month, to the arrival of the great magazines. The Atlantic, Har

We New Englanders are beginning to realize the importance of the public library as a factor in the forming of habit, and life, and character. Of this the recent rapid increase in the number of libraries is a most encouraging proof.

A smart little village, of which I have the good fortune to be a foster-child, has recently received a handome gift for a library; a sum sufficient to enable it to purchase land, building, and books, and to secure the services of a competent librarian.

Encouraged by this generosity, I feel moved to make an earnest appeal in behalf of every writer and reader, and thinker in New England. Let us all do what we can in aid of the library movement. Let each help his own town. Let us unswervingly advocate the good cause, until each town shall possess its library, large or small, as the case may be.

"Every town," says Richardson in his admirable" Choice of Books," "ought to have a library containing as many volumes as the town has inhabitants. Such a library becomes at once the centre of the intellectual life of the

THE WRITER, the Literary World, the Criticwhat wholly delightful and helpful guests are these! The day of their arrival is a fête day in our cloister-like community.

In this manner, through book and magazine, do gracious guests come to us: while we, the enchanted hosts, do not entertain, but are ourselves entertained. Beneath our humble rooftree we may shelter the noblest of the earth. Seated at our own fireside, we may set forth on Fancy's wing and go around the world, not by "The old Marlboro' Road," but by a route equally fascinating.

The library is, by all odds, the most valuable property a town can possess.

Who of us, then, faithful, loyal New Englanders, would not do our level best toward the establishing of these wholesome institutions? Let us be brave and brotherly. Let each do what he can. Let us stand sturdily shoulder to shoulder in aid of this movement, until each New England town and hamlet rejoices in its library. Let us but make a beginning, be it never so small and puny. Once started, the ball will roll. The meagre nucleus of one book,

perhaps, or a dozen, will, in a wonderfully brief space of time, develop into a useful library.

The majority of us country folk- butchers, bakers, candle-stick makers, and what not cannot, perhaps, give much money, not being burdened with this world's goods. But to all is it possible to give something. I believe, with Emerson, that our gifts are too often expressionless. I believe that each should give a part of himself; that the giving should signify, should have character, and embody the personality of the giver. Let the poet give a poem, the artist a picture, the jeweller a jewel, the farmer a bushel of potatoes, the fisherman a fish, the stevedore coals. Let us bravely give the best that is within us. Let us, being Yankees, give our wits. Let each do his honest share toward raising the standard of our knowledge and culture, till New England shall blossom with libraries, and each town, and village, and hamlet shall know a rarer and sweeter atmosphere, even as to-day our fair hillsides and winding wood-ways are redolent of arbutus, and sweetbrier, and bayberry, of pine, and hemlock, and spruce, and fir. William Hale.

DOVER, N. H.

THE SCIENCE OF FICTION.

Since art is science with an addition, since some science underlies all art, there is seemingly no paradox in the use of such a phrase as "the science of fiction."

One concludes it to mean that comprehensive and accurate knowledge of realities which must be sought for, or intuitively possessed to some extent, before anything deserving the name of an artistic performance in narrative can be produced.

The particulars of this science are the generalities of all others. The materials of fiction being human nature and circumstances, the science thereof may be dignified by calling it the codified law of things as they really are. No single pen can treat of this exhaustively. The science of fiction is contained in that large work, the cyclopædia of life.

The most devoted apostle of realism, the sheerest naturalist, cannot escape, any more than the withered old gossip over her fire, the exercise of art in his labor or pleasure of telling a tale. Not until he becomes an automatic register of all impressions, without regard to their bearings, can he be called purely scientific, or even a manufacturer on scientific principles. Then, too, if in the exercise of his reason he select or omit, with an eye to being more truthful than truth (the just aim of art), he transforms himself into a technicist at a move.

As this theory of the need for the exercise of the Dædalian faculty for selection and cunning manipulation has been disputed, it may be worth while to examine the contrary proposition. That it should ever have been maintained by such a romancer as M. Zola in his work on the "Roman Experimental" seems to reveal an obtuseness to the disproof conveyed in his own novels, which, in a French writer, is singular indeed.

To be sure, that author whose powers in story telling, rightfully and wrongfully exercised, may be partly owing to the fact that he is not a critic - does in a measure concede something in the qualified counsel that the novel should keep as close to reality as it can a remark which may be interpreted with infinite latitude, and would no doubt have been cheerfully accepted by Dumas père or Mrs. Radcliffe. It implies discriminative choice, and if we grant that, we grant all. But to maintain in theory what he abandons in practice, to subscribe to rules and to work by instinct, is a proceeding not confined to the author of "Germinal" and "La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret."

The reasons that make against such conformation of story writing to scientific processes have been set forth so many times in examining the theo ries of the realist that it is not necessary to recapitulate them here. Admitting the desirability, the impossibility, of reproducing in its entirety the phantasmagoria of experience, infinitude of atomic truth, without shadow, relevancy, or subordination, is not the least of them. The fallacy appears to owe its origin to the just perception that with our widening knowledge of the universe and its forces, and man's position therein, narrative, to be artistically convincing, must adjust itself to the new alignment, as would also artistic works in form and color if further spectacles in their sphere could be presented. Nothing but the illusion of truth can permanently please, and when the old illusions begin to be penetrated a more natural magic has to be supplied.

Creativeness in its full and ancient sense - the making a thing or situation out of nothing that

This is the meaning deducible from the work of the realists, however they themselves may define realism in terms. Realism is an unfortunate, an ambiguous word, which has been assumed in one place to mean copyism and in another pruriency, and has led to two classes of delineators being included in one condemnation.

Just as bad a word is one used to express a feature in this development—namely, “brutality," a term which, first applied by French critics, has since spread over the English schools of criticism like rash. It aptly hits off the immediate impression of the thing meant, but it has the disadvantage of defining impartiality as a passion, and a plan as a caprice. It certainly is very far from truly expressing the aims and methods of conscientious and well intentioned authors, who, notwithstanding their excesses, errors, and absurd theories, attempt to narrate the verité vraie.

To return for a moment to the theories of the scientific realists. Every friend to the novel should and must be in sympathy with their error, even while distinctly perceiving it. Though not true, it is well found. To advance realism as complete copyism, to call the idle trade of story-telling a science, is the hyperbolic flight of an admirable enthusiasm, the exaggerated cry of an honest reaction from the false, in which the truth has been impetuously approached and overleaped in fault of lighted on.

Possibly, if we only wait, the third something, akin to perfection, will take up its post on its due pedestal. How that third something may be induced to hasten its pace, who shall say? Hardly the English critic.

But this appertains to the art of novel-writing, and is outside the immediate subject. To return to the "science."

Yet what is the use? Its very comprehensiveness renders the attempt to dwell upon it a futility. Being an observative responsiveness to everything within the cycle of the suns that has to do with actual life, it is easier to say what it is not than to categorize its summa genera. It is not, for example, the paying of a great regard to adventitious externals to the neglect of vital qualities, a precision about the outside of the platter and an obtuseness to the contents.

A sight for the finer qualities of existence, an

ear for the "still, sad music of humanity," are no to be acquired by the surface senses alone, close as the powers in photography may be.

What cannot be discerned by eye and ear, what may be apprehended only by the mental tactility that comes from a sympathetic appreciativeness of life in all its manifestations, this is the gift which renders its possessor a more accurate delineator of human nature than many another with twice his powers and means of external observation, but without that sympathy.

To see in half and quarter views the whole picture, to catch from a few bars the whole tune, is the intuitive power that supplies the would-be story writer with the scientific bases for his pursuit. He may not count the dishes at a feast, or accurately estimate the value of the jewels in a lady's diadem; but through the smoke of those dishes and the rays from these jewels he sees eternally, written on the wall:

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on, and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep.

Thus, as aforesaid, an attempt to set forth the science of fiction in calculable pages is futility; it is to write a whole library of human philosophy with instructions how to feel.

Once in a crowd a listener heard a needy and illiterate woman saying of another poor and haggard woman who had lost her little son years before: "You can see the ghost of that child in her face even now."

That speaker was one who, though she could probably neither read nor write, had the true means toward the "science" of fiction innate within her; a power of observation informed by a living heart. Had she been trained in the technicalities, she might have held the mirror up to nature with good effect; a reflection which leads to a conjecture that, perhaps, true novelists, like poets, are born, not made. Thomas Hardy, in the New York Herald.

HOW ONE SERIAL WRITER WORKS.

I had an interesting conversation recently with a popular writer of serial stories for the weekly papers, and he gave me a description of his method of working, which revealed more forcibly than ever that literature is often only a trade, and a very mechanical one at that.

"As soon as I have made arrangements for a serial story," he said, "I sit down and sketch out the main plot. Then, if ten instalments are wanted,

I divide my plot into ten parts, and each of these