Literature and the Fine Arts. xxxiii 



ance that they have not been dealt with, neither has it been 

 supposed, I think, that in a new country such as this, the 

 belles lettres are incongruous or premature. It is possible 

 that it may have been deemed unnecessar}'^ to take them into 

 consideration, in the belief that societies exist here, having 

 a special mission to concern themselves with Art and 

 Literature. In any case, it is a cause of regret that Section 

 G has, up to the present, never been developed. I should 

 very nmch like, therefore, to assist in developing Section G. 

 I am aware that it has been asserted, sometimes regretfully, 

 sometimes scornfully, that we have no Australian literature 

 other than periodical literature, and that periodical literature 

 comprises newspapers and very little else. It is true we do 

 not produce many books, and it is not less true that of the 

 books we do produce, some of them are not worth keeping. 

 But after you have well sifted all the books which all the 

 colonies have given to the Australian world, there will 

 remain a residuum which, small as it is, represents a 

 literature of its own kind. Among the many writers of 

 verse, there have been some poets ; among the numerous 

 story-tellers, there have been a few whose tales are worth 

 preserving ; there are historians whose records it would be 

 a calamity to lose, and we have had essayists whose writings 

 deserve to become classical. In respect of dramatic writing, 

 we have not achieved much distinction. In part proof of 

 this, I may mention that, during the last twenty-five years, I 

 have read about 300 plays in manuscript, and I am obliged 

 to say that I could not recommend more than five of these to 

 the consideration of managers, and even this recommenda- 

 tion was hesitatingly conceded. The bulk of our Australian 

 literature, therefore, is periodical ; that is to say, it consists 

 of newspapers ; and of this kind of literature, we have a good 

 deal. I have to admit that a large proportion of it is of a 

 superior kind, and that some of it is of a high-class character. 

 I am not unaware that another proportion of it is of an 

 opposite degree of excellence. I am not now speaking, nor 

 need I be expected to speak, of the moral tone of Australian 



