Contemporary Reviews (Bookshelf)

Reviews of book in PG, taken from periodicals at the time they were first published. (note that in the reviews from Punch, the reviewer uses the name of "The Baron de Book-Wormes")

Authors

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Agassiz, Elizabeth Cabot Cary, 1822-1907

Louis Agassiz: His Life and Correspondence — The northeastern corner of the ancient Pays de Vaud, only part of which is included in the modern canton, is little known to tourists. It lies away from the chief lines of travel, and it has neither the magnificent views that draw the visitor aside to Orbe nor the associations that induce him to stop at Coppet or Clarens. Yet its breezy upland plains and its quiet villages—some of them once populous and prosperous towns—are not devoid of charm, or of the interest connected with historical epochs and famous names. The "lone wall" and "lonelier column" at Avenches date from the period when this was the Roman capital of Helvetia. Morat still shows many a mark and relic of its siege by Charles the Bold and of the overthrow of his forces by the Swiss. Payerne was the birthplace, in 1779, of Jomini, the greatest of all writers on military operations, whose precocious genius, while he was a mere stripling and before he had witnessed any battles or manoeuvres, penetrated the secret of Bonaparte's combinations and victorious campaigns, which veteran commanders were watching with mere wonderment and dismay. At Motiers, a few miles farther north, was born, in 1807, Louis Agassiz, who at an equally early age displayed a like intuitive comprehension of many of the workings of Nature, and who subsequently became the chief exponent of the glacial theory and the highest authority on the structure and classification of fishes. Each of these two men gave his ripest powers and longest labors to a great country far from their common home,—Jomini to Russia, Agassiz to the United States; and, dissimilar as were their objects and pursuits, their intellectual resemblance was fundamental. The pre-eminent quality of each was the power of rapid generalization, of mastering and subordinating details, of grasping and applying principles and laws. Agassiz differed as much from an animal-loving collector like Frank Buckland, whose father was one of his stanchest friends and co-workers, as Jomini differed from a fighting general like Ney, to whom he suggested the movements that resulted in the French victory at Bautzen. Switzerland is equally proud of the great strategist and the great naturalist, but to Americans in general the former is at the most a mere name, while the career of the latter is an object of wide-spread and even national interest.

In the volumes before us the story of that career is clearly and completely, yet concisely, set forth. Readers of biography who delight mainly in social gossip may complain of the absence of everything of the kind; but such matter neither belonged to the subject nor was required for its elucidation. We are prone to draw a distinction between what we call a man's personal life and the larger and more active part of his existence, and to fancy that the clue to his character lies in some minor idiosyncrasies, or in habits and tastes that were perhaps accidentally formed. But every earnest worker reveals in his methods and [pg 634] achievements not alone his intellectual capacities, but all the deep and essential qualities of his nature. With Agassiz this was conspicuously the case. The enthusiasm, the singleness of purpose, and the indefatigable energy that constituted the fond, so to speak, of his character were as open to view as the features of his countenance. Hence the single and strong impression he produced on all with whom he came in contact, the sympathy he so quickly kindled, and the co-operation he so readily enlisted. It was easily perceived that he was no self-seeker, that no thought of personal interest mingled with his devotion to science, and that he was not more intent on absorbing knowledge than desirous of diffusing it. No one has ever more fully and happily blended the qualities of student and teacher, and it was in this double capacity that he became so public and prominent a figure and exerted so wide an influence in the country of his adoption.

Some men overcome obstacles and attain their ends by sheer persistency of will, others by tact and persuasiveness, while there is a third class, before whom the barred doors open as they are successively approached, through what are called either fortunate accidents or Providential interventions, but are seen, on closer inspection, to have been the direct and natural effects of the force unconsciously exerted by an harmonious combination of qualities. Agassiz's career was full of such instances. The insistent desire of his parents, while stinting themselves to secure his education, that he should adopt a bread-winning profession, yielded, not to any urgent appeals or dogged display of resolution, but to the proof given by his labors that he was choosing more wisely for himself. Cuvier, without any request or expectation, resigned to the neophyte who, after following in his footsteps, was outstripping him in certain lines, drawings and notes prepared for his own use. Humboldt, at a critical moment, saved him from the necessity for abandoning his projects by an unsolicited loan, supplemented by many further acts of assistance of a different kind. In England every possible facility and aid was afforded to him as well by private individuals as by public institutions. In America, men like Mr. Nathaniel Thayer and Mr. John Anderson needed only in some chance way to become acquainted with his plans to be ready to provide the means for carrying them out. It was the same on all occasions. The United States government, the Coast Survey, the legislature of Massachusetts, private individuals throughout the country, showed a rare willingness, and even eagerness, to forward his views. The man and the object were identified in people's minds, and, as in all such cases, a feeling was roused and an impulse generated which could have sprung from no other source.

The attractiveness and charm which everybody seems to have found in him had perhaps the same origin. It does not appear that his nature was peculiarly sympathetic, that it was through any unusual flow and warmth of feeling toward others that he so quickly became the object of their attachment or regard. Of course, we do not intend to intimate that he was deficient in strength of affection or in the least degree cold or unresponsive. But his "magnetism," to use the current word, lay in the ardor and singleness of his devotion to science, not as an abstraction, but as a potent agency in civilization, in the union of elevation with enthusiasm, in an openness that seemed to reveal everything, yet nothing that should have been hidden. Hence this biography, little as it deals with purely personal matters, awakens an interest of precisely the same kind as that which the living Agassiz was accustomed to excite. For the student of comparative zoology or of glacial action all that is here told about these subjects can have only an historical value. But no reader can follow the successive steps of a career that was always in the truest sense upward without being touched by that inspiring influence which it constantly diffused, and which Americans, above all others, have reason to hold in grateful remembrance. — (from Lippincott's Magazine, December 1885 )

Atherton, Gertrude Franklin Horn, 1857-1948

The Avalanche — I rather suspect Mrs. GERTRUDE ATHERTON of having written The Avalanche (MURRAY) either for the amusement of exercise in an unfamiliar medium, or, well, for any motive that might explain a production certainly not quite up to her own standard. Its publishers (who may be prejudiced) consider The Avalanche as "a brilliant and engaging study of mystery and romance;" me it impressed as a melodrama dependent on one long-heralded sensation, which proves on tardy arrival an affair of disappointment. I suppose I must be careful not to give away the mystery, such as it is. Price Rugler was anxious to discover why his attractive wife assumed a worried look when money was mentioned and fainted on being told that she was not to wear the family ruby at a particular masque. All this happened (you may not be astonished to hear) in San Francisco, amongst that luxurious, idle, over-moneyed society whose manners Mrs. ATHERTON knows and describes so well. Price had already found out, with the assistance of a not too brilliant detective, that his wife's mother derived her income from a gambling saloon; the remaining problem was how to link up this knowledge with the odd behaviour of Mrs. Price. Perhaps you see it already. She had been--No, I said I wouldn't, and I won't. Of course the discovery couldn't be called cheerful, though it was fortunately made in time to prevent any great harm. But it was nothing like an avalanche. — (from Punch, June 25, 1919 )

Beach, Rex Ellingwood, 1877-1949

The Winds of Chance — Mr. REX BEACH is one of the few prolific writers whose stories increase in power as they increase in number, and this though they are essentially novels of action rather than novels of thought. Of his latest effort, The Winds of Chance (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), one may say that there is not a tedious page in it. The scene is laid in Yukon, a very vortex of life and colour and excitement in fiction, whatever it may seem to the actual inhabitants. The true hero of the story, Napoleon Doret, the French voyageur, wins his heart's desire in the end and we breathe a sigh of relief. The other hero is left the accepted swain of the daughter of the Colonel of the North-West Mounted Police at Dawson, and this we find a little hard to swallow, seeing what shady, not to say immoral, company, male and female, he had just been basking in. He is a weak creature and certainly should have married the Countess Courteau, an Amazonian lady, who would have kept him in order. But that is to be fastidious. The story is crisp and vivid, and, anyway, those ancient prospectors, Tom Linton and Jerry McQuirk, are worth twice the money. — (from Punch, March 26, 1919 )

Bennett, Arnold, 1867-1931

The Roll Call — MR. ARNOLD BENNETT'S new novel, The Roll Call (HUTCHINSON), is a continuation of the Clayhanger series to the extent that its hero, George Cannon, is the stepson of Edwin, who himself makes a perfunctory appearance at the close of the tale. The scene is, however, now London, where we watch George winning fame and fortune, quite in the masterful Five-Towns manner, as an architect. The change is, I think, beneficial. That quality of unstalable astonishment, native to Mr. BENNETT's folk, accords better with the complexities of the wonderful city than to places where it had at times only indifferent matter upon which to work. But it is noticeable that Mr. BENNETT can communicate this surprise not only to his characters but to his readers. There is an enthusiasm, real or apparent, in his art which, like the beam celestial, "evermore makes all things new," so that when he tells us, as here, that there are studios in Chelsea or that the lamps in the Queen's Hall have red shades, these facts acquire the thrill of sudden and almost startling discovery. I suppose this to be one reason for the pleasure that I always have in his books; another is certainly the intense, even passionate sympathy that he lavishes upon the central character. In the present example the affairs of George Cannon are shown developing largely under the stimulus of four women, of whom the least seen is certainly the most interesting, while Lois, the masterful young female whom George marries, promises as a personality more than she fulfils. We conduct George's fortunes as far as the crisis produced in them by the War, and leave him contemplating a changed life as a subaltern in the R.F.A. It is therefore permissible to hope that in a year or two we may expect the story of his reconstruction. I shall read it with delight. — (from Punch, February 5, 1919 )

Beresford, J. D. (John Davys), 1873-1947

The Gervaise Comedy — I am bound to admit that for all my appreciation of Mr. J.D. BERESFORD as a literary craftsman I did find The Jervaise Comedy (COLLINS) a bit slow off the mark. Here is a quite considerable volume, exquisitely printed upon delightful paper, all about the events of twenty-four hours, in which, when you come to consider it afterwards, nothing very much happened. The heroine thought about eloping with the chauffeur, and the onlooker, who tells the tale, thought about falling in love with the sister of the same. In both cases thought is subsequently translated into action, but only after the curtains fall. Meanwhile an affair of hesitations, suggestions, moods and (as I hinted above) rather too many words. It is a tribute to Mr. BERESFORD'S art that out of all this we do eventually emerge with some definite idea of the characters and a pleasantly-amused interest in their fate. There is, of course, plenty of distinction in the writing. But I could have wished more or earlier movement. Even the motor-car, whose appearance promised a hint, the merest far-off possibility, of farcical developments, shared in the general lethargy and refused to move from its ditch. In spite, however, of this procrastination I wish it to be understood that the story is in some ways one of unusual charm; it has style, atmosphere and a very sensible dignity. But, lacking the confidence that I fortunately had in my author, I question whether I should have survived to the point at which these qualities became apparent. — (from Punch, April 2, 1919 )

Buchan, John, 1875-1940

Mr Standfast — Mr. Standfast (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) is the third book of the super-spy trilogy that Colonel JOHN BUCHAN has given us, as a kind of supplement to his more official record of the War. We have the same hero, Hannay, as in Greenmantle and The Thirty-Nine Steps, the same group of associates, reinforced for purposes of love-interest by a young and attractive female, and the same arch-Hun, now identified as the Graf von Schwabing. Also the affair pursues much the same hide-and-seek course that gave the former adventures their deserved popularity. I entirely decline even to sketch the manifold vicissitudes of Hannay (now a General), tracking and being tracked, captive and captor, ranging the habitable and non-habitable globe, always (with a fine disregard for the requirements of book-making) convinced that the next chapter will be the last. Three criticisms I cannot avoid. To begin with, Colonel BUCHAN is really becoming too lavish with his coincidences. Secondly, I found it odd that the spy-hunters, after employing so many ruses and so much camouflage that one might say they almost refused to recognise their own reflections in a mirror, should proceed to the opposite extreme and arrange all their plans, with engaging frankness, over the telephone. Finally, the tale, though full of admirable disconnected moments, does not carry one along sufficiently quickly. General Hannay was, I thought, too apt to interpolate lengthy reminiscences of active service, just when I wanted to get on with the matter in hand. Pace in such affairs is everything, and my complaint is that, though the hunt had yielded some capital sport, its end found me with my pulse rather disappointingly calm. — (from Punch, June 4, 1919 )

Burroughs, Edgar Rice, 1875-1950

The Son of Tarzan — I gather that The Son of Tarzan (METHUEN) is the fourth of a Tarzan series by Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS, who specialises in an exciting brand of hero, half ape, half man. Tarzan père had been suckled and reared by a proud ape foster-mother, and after many jungle adventures had settled down as Lord Greystoke. This latest instalment of the Tarzan chronicles finds the Greystokes somewhat anxious about the restlessness and unconventional tastes of their schoolboy son, who inherits not only his father's vague jungle longings but all his explicit acquired characteristics, so that when, with the decent old ape, Akut, disguised as his invalid grandmother, he sails away from England and plunges into the wild he promptly becomes the terror of the jungle and bites the jugular veins of hostile man and beast with such a precision of technique that he becomes king of the ape-folk, as his father, Tarzan, had been before him. Plausibility, even within the limits of his bizarre plan, is not Mr. BURROUGHS' strong suit, but exciting incident, ingeniously imagined and staged, with swift movement, undoubtedly is. If the author wouldn't let his favourites off so easily and would give their enemies a better sporting chance, he would more readily sustain the illusion which is of the essence of real enjoyment in this kind of fantasy. But I imagine the normal human boy will find nothing whatever to complain of, and to him I chiefly commend this yarn. — (from Punch, April 2, 1919 )

Tarzan the Untamed Audio — Are you a victim to the Tarzan habit? Perhaps your eye may have been caught by the word on bookstalls as the generic title of an increasing pile of volumes; but knowing, like myself, that all things explain themselves in time, you may have been content to leave it at that. Meanwhile, however, the thing has continued to spread, till on the wrapper of Tarzan the Untamed (Methuen), which now at last finds me out, its publishers are able to number its devotees in millions. Well, of course the outstanding fact about such popularity is that in face of it any affectation of superiority becomes simply silly. One has got to accept this creation of Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs as among the definite literary phenomena of our time. In the immediate spasm before me Tarzan (who is, if you need telling, a kind of horribly exaggerated Mowgli after a diet of the Food of the Gods ) is represented as placing himself at the disposal of the British forces in East Africa, and attacking the Germans with man-eating lions. The rather chastening feature of which was my own unexpected enjoyment of the idea. Even, for one disconcerting moment, like the persons in the admonitory anecdotes who taste opium "just for fun," I began to feel that perhaps.... However it passed, and the temptation has not returned. Meanwhile the real nature of Tarzanism, whether some sinister possession or simply the age-long appetite for the monstrous, just now a little out of hand, remains as far from solution as ever. — from Punch, October 27, 1920

Burroughs, John, 1837-1921

Birds and Poets: with other Papers — A duodecimo that discourses on equal terms of Emerson and the chickadee, and unites Carlyle and the author's cow with a cement or filling-in indescribable in variety and in the comminution of materials, need not be held to strict account in the matter of neatness or accuracy of title. The closing article, headed "The Flight of the Eagle," is the most remarkable of the collection. Who would suspect, under such a heading, an elaborate eulogy of Walt Whitman? The writer is obviously more at home among the song-birds than among the Raptores, unless he be the discoverer of some new species of eagle characterized by traits very unlike those of other members of the genus. It were to be wished that he had left out the disquisition on Whitman, for it is a jarring chord in his little orchestra of lyric and ornithologic song. He might have kept it by him till the longer growing of his critical beard, and then, if still a devotee at that singular shrine, have expanded it into a volume or two explanatory of the imagination, animus and metre of his favorite bard.

The feathered warblers have always been popular with the featherless, who are indebted to them for no end of similes and suggestions. What would poetry be without the skylark, the nightingale, the dove and the eagle? It is far yet from having exhausted them. It cannot be said to have approached them in the right way—on the most eloquent and interesting side. It forgets that each species of bird stands by itself, and has its special life Page 517and history as truly as man. We counted thirty-nine kinds in a grove the centre whereof was our delightful abode for two-thirds of the past summer, each endowed with its separate outfit of language, ways and means of living, tastes and political and social notions. In each, moreover, individualism showed itself—if not to our apprehension as articulately, yet as indubitably, as among the race which considers them to have been all created for its amusement and advantage. It does not take long, superficial as is our acquaintance with their vernacular and the workings of their little brains, to single out particular specimens, and perceive that no two "birds of a feather" are exactly alike. A particular robin will rule the roost, and assert successfully for his mate the choice of resting-places above competing redbreasts. It is a particular catbird, identified, it may be, by a missing feather in his tail, that heads the foray on our strawberries and cherries. We recognize afar off either of the pair of "flickers," or yellow-shafted woodpeckers, which have set up their penates in the heart of the left-hand garden gatepost. The wren whose modest tabernacle occupies the top of the porch pilaster we have little difficulty in "spotting" when we meet her in a joint stroll along the lawn-fence. Her ways are not as the ways of other wrens. She has a somewhat different style of diving into the ivy and exploring the syringa. A new generation of doves has grown up since the lilacs were in bloom, and nothing is easier than to distinguish the old and young of the two or three separate families till all leave the grass and the gravel together and hie to the stubble-fields beyond our ken. Of the one mocking bird who made night hideous by his masterly imitations of the screaking of a wheel-barrow (regreased at an early period in self-defence) and the wheezy bark of Beppo, the superannuated St. Bernard, there could of course be no doubt. There was none of his kind to compare him with—not even a mate, for "sexual selection" could not possibly operate in face of so inharmonious a love-song. His isolation had its parallel in the one white guinea-fowl that haunted the shrubbery like a ghost, much more silent and placid than it would have been in society, and its antitype in the hennery, where individuality of course ran riot among the Brahmas, Dominicas and Hamburgs—hens that would and would not lay, that would and would not set, that would and would not scratch up seeds, and presented generally as great a variety of vagaries as of feathers. So, when we turned our back at last on lovely Boscobel, itself shut out, as the common phrase goes, "from the world" by serried ramparts of maple, elm, acacia and catalpa, we knew well that that enceinte of leafage enclosed many little worlds of its own—winged microcosms, epicycles of the grand cycle of dateless life which man in his humility assumes to be merely a subsidiary appendage of his own orbit.

Birds should be studied seriously. The naturalists will tell us more about them, and interest us more, than the poets. Mr. Bryant makes fun of the bobolink, and turns into an aimless whistle the solemn oration on domestic matters uttered by that small but energetic American to his mate. The waterfowl he treats more gravely and respectfully, but he still makes it only a part of the landscape and the theme, without ascribing any intelligent purpose to its flight. The bird, proceeding steadily and calmly to its business, may well have confounded its versifier with his fellow the fowler, and looked upon him, too, as regretting only that it was out of gunshot. Audubon or Wilson would have noted more sensibly the floating figure, far above "falling dew," and the earth-bound mortal who was evidently afraid of rheumatics and calculating whether he could walk home before dark. The bird, they would have been perfectly aware, was neither "wandering" nor "lost," and no more in need of the special interposition of a protecting Providence than they or Mr. Bryant. They would infer its motives, its point of departure and its destination, the character of the friends it left behind or sought— whether it was carrying out a plan of the day or bound on an expedition covering half the year. Its species would have been plain to them at half a glance, and its scientific name would have replaced the vague designation of "waterfowl." Its life, habits and habitat winter and summer, would have unrolled before them, and the dogs-eared and rain-stained note-book sprung open for a new entry. The poet, on the other hand, got happily home without injury to his health (for he is still hale half a century after the fact), lit the gas, nibbed the quill pen of the day, and sent down to us what must be confessed a pleasanter memorandum than we should have had from the forest-students. Page 518These, brave and ardent fellows! have long been asleep beneath the birds.

Mr. Burroughs is half poet, half naturalist in his way of looking at Nature, and steers clear of the poetic vagueness in regard to species. A passing description of the brown thrush as "skulking" among the bushes hits that bird to the life. Some remarks on page 119 would seem to be applied by a slip of the pen to the crow blackbird, instead of the cowbird, which has always enjoyed the distinction of being the only American species that disposes of its offspring after the fashion of the cuckoo and Jean Jacques Rousseau. The chapter on Emerson contains some acute remarks, but the warmest tribute to Emerson is the book itself, in which that writer's influence is everywhere patent both in style and thought. Mr. Burroughs has a happy facility of expression, and could well afford by this time to discard the Emersonian props and stand on his own merits. — (from Lippincott's Magazine, October 18877 )

Connor, Ralph, Pseudonym, 1860-1937

The Sky Pilot of No Man's Land — Barry Dunbar, the heroic padre of Mr. RALPH CONNOR'S story, The Sky Pilot of No Man's Land (HODDER AND STOUGHTON), hailed from Canada and went to France with the Canadians. Endowed with superb physical beauty and considerable musical gifts he started, you might think, with fortune in his favour. But at the outset he was a tactless young man and had a good deal to learn before he was in any way competent to teach. Mr. RALPH CONNOR has described with skill and great sincerity the horrors of the War in the earlier days; but for me he has spoilt both his story and the effect of it by his extreme sentimentality. He is persistently concerned to raise a lump in my throat. I readily believe that he was actuated by the highest motive in trying to show us how responsive the Canadians were when their spiritual needs were attended to by a man of courage and understanding. But I dislike an excess of emotional spasms, and in these Mr. CONNOR has indulged so freely that his book can only be for other tastes than mine. — (from Punch, June 4, 1919 )

Crawford, F. Marion (Francis Marion), 1854-1909

A Cigarette Maker's Romance — Permit the Baron to strongly recommend MARION CRAWFORD's A Cigarette-Maker's Romance. Slight indeed is the plot, and few the dramatis personæ: but the latter are drawn with a Meissonier-like finish, and the simple tale is charmingly and touchingly told. The wonder of it is that so little to tell should have occupied two volumes; and a greater wonder remains, which is, that, at the close, the reader should wish there were a third. To create this desire is, after all, the very perfection of the art of novel-writing. The novelist who does not make the reader "wish as there was more on it," according to the philosophic dictum of Sam Weller on the art of epistolary correspondence, has failed. Henceforth this novel of Mr. CRAWFORD's goes forth to the world with the Baron's best imprimatur. This poor little cigarette-maker requires no puffing of her wares. Enough that the Baron should say to his readers, "Tolle lege!" You will be delighted with it, "Il cigaretto per esser felice." It is a charming story, says emphatically, THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS. — (from Punch, Nov 1, 1890 )

Doyle, Arthur Conan, Sir 1859-1930

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes Audio — The title of Mr. Conan Doyle's new book, Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, is incomplete without the addition of, "And the D.D., or Dummy Doctor," who plays a part in the narratives analogous to that of "Charles, his Friend," on the stage. The book is, in many respects, a thriller, reminding one somewhat of The Diary of a Late Physician, by Samuel Warren. This volume is handsomely got up—too handsomely—and profusely, too profusely, illustrated. For both romancer and reader, such stories are better un-illustrated. A sensational picture attracts, and distracts. In this collection the Baron can recommend The Beryl Coronet, The Red-Headed League, The Copper Beeches, and The Speckled Band. The best time for reading any one of these stories is the last thing at night, before turning in. "At such an hour, try The Speckled Band, and see how you like it," says the Bold Baron. — (from Punch, December 10, 1892 )

Dunsany, Lord (Edward J. M. D. Plunkett), 1878-1957

Tales of War — There can be few Irishmen who look at their England with such affectionate eyes as Lord DUNSANY. Tales of War (FISHER UNWIN) is full of this sweet theme. The first of the tales is a fine story of the Daleswood men who, cut off from their supports and worried because there would be none left in their native village to carry on the Daleswood breed, were for sending out their youngest boy to surrender. But, deciding that that wasn't good Daleswood form, they (for their last hours, as they thought) fell to recalling the familiar beauties of their old home and to cutting in the Picardy chalk the roll of their names for remembrance. You get it again, that calling-up of the home memories, when, in another marooned party, the Sargeant that was keeper begins with a vision of sausages and mashed and goes on to the birds and beasts and flowers and soft noises of English woods at night. And in a half-dozen other sketches. And it is good to find an Irishman and a poet to say things which stick on our embarrassed tongues. Lord DUNSANY has a happy trick of compressing a great deal into a little space, and his vignettes, sketched in with a conscious art, should find a place on our shelves among the war records which our children are to read. — (from Punch, March 12, 1919 )

Haggard, H. Rider (Henry Rider), 1856-1925

Moon of Israel — In an author's note to Moon of Israel (MURRAY) Sir H. RIDER HAGGARD tells us that his book "suggests that the real Pharaoh of the Exodus was not Meneptah or Merenptah, son of Rameses the Great, but the mysterious usurper, Amenmeses ..." I am not a student of Egyptology, and in this little matter of AMENMESES am perfectly content to trust myself to Sir RIDER, and, provided that he tells a good tale, to follow him wherever he chooses to lead the way. And this story, put into the mouth of Ana, the scribe, is packed with mystery and magic and miracles and murder. For fear, however, that this may sound a little too exhausting for your taste, let me add that the main theme is the love of the Crown Prince of Egypt for the Israelite, Lady Merapi, Moon of Israel. Sir RIDER'S hand has lost none of its cunning, and, though his dialogue occasionally provokes a smile when one feels that seriousness is demanded, he is here as successful as ever in creating or, at any rate, in reproducing atmosphere. I hope, when you read this tale of the Pharaohs, that you will not find that your memory of the Book of Exodus is as faded as I found mine to be. — (from Punch, January 2, 1919 )

Harte, Bret, 1836-1902

By Shore and Sedge — Taking into consideration the ease with which Mr. Bret Harte won his laurels, and the belief which all his early admirers shared that here at last was the great American novelist, who was to hold a distinctive place in the world's literature, he has perhaps not fulfilled expectations nor answered the demands upon his powers. The very individuality of his work, its characteristic bias, has been, in point of fact, a hinderance and an impediment. The unexpectedness of his first stories, the enchanted surprise, like that of a new and delicious vintage or a wonderful undiscovered chord in music,—these effects are not easily made to recur with undiminished strength and charm. However, one may generally find some bubbles of the old delightful elixir in Mr. Harte's stories, and in this little group of them, regathered, we believe, from English magazines, each is interesting in its way, and each true to the author's typical idea, which is to discover to his readers some heroic quality in unheroic human beings which transforms their whole lives before our eyes. — (from Lippincott's Magazine, August 1885 )

Hergesheimer, Joseph, 1880-1954

The Three Black Pennys — The Three Black Pennys (HEINEMANN) is a story that began by perplexing and ended by making a complete conquest of me. Its author, Mr. JOSEPH HERGESHEIMER, is, I think, new to this side of the Atlantic; the publishers tell me (and, to prevent any natural misapprehension, I pass on the information at once) that he belongs to "a Pennsylvania Dutch family, settled for many generations in Philadelphia." Which being so, one can enjoy his work with a free conscience. It certainly seems to me very unusual in quality. The theme of the tale is the history of the Penny family, or rather of the periodical outcrop in it of a certain strain that produces Pennys dark of countenance and incalculable of conduct. This recurrence is shown in three examples: the first, Howart Penny, in the days when men wore powder and the Penny forge had just been started in what was then a British colony; the next, Jasper, involved in a murder trial in the sixties; and; last of the black Pennys, another Howart, in whom the family energy has thinned to a dilettante appreciation of the arts, dying alone amongst his collections. You can see from this outline that the book is incidentally liable to confound the skipper, who may find himself confronted with (apparently) the same character tying a periwig on one page and hiring a taxi on another. I am mistaken though if you will feel inclined to skip a single page of a novel at once so original and well-told. As a detail of criticism I had the feeling that the "blackness" of the Penny exceptions would have shown up better had we seen more of the family in its ordinary rule; but of the power behind Mr. HERGESHEIMER'S work there can be no question. He is, I am sure, an artist upon a quite unusual scale, from whom great things may be anticipated. — (from Punch, February 26, 1919 )

Howells, William Dean, 1830-1927

The Rise of Silas Lapham — In his later books Mr. Howells has shown that he is on the point of

discovering the secret of the best novelists. Unabashed by the difficulties and dangers which beset the realistic writer, he has gone to work to describe the simple machinery which puts in motion all human actions and passions, and has given a subtile but sure analysis of certain phases of modern life, and a vivid picture of at least two actual, warm, palpitating, breathing men. His success in this respect is the more striking because he began by offering us mere pasteboard heroes of the most conventional type. The male characters in his early books were, in fact, shuttle-cocks to be tossed hither and thither by the mysterious contradictions, the incomprehensible inconsistencies, of his heroines, whose scheme of existence was the indulgence of every whim, and whose notion of logic was that one paradox must educe another still more startling. Having finally made up his mind as to the insoluble nature of the female problem, he seems inclined to discard mere clevernesses and prettinesses and to advance into the broad arena of real life, with its diversity of actors and its multiplicity of interests. Both Bartley Hubbard in "A Modern Instance" and Silas Lapham in the book before us strike us as admirable characterizations. If Lapham is in certain respects a less original presentation than Bartley Hubbard, he is at least a hero who draws more strongly upon the reader's sympathies and takes surer hold of the popular heart. In fact, Silas, with his big, hairy fist, his ease in his shirt-sleeves, his boastful belief in himself, his conscience, his ambition, and his failure, makes, if we include his sensible wife, the success of the novel before us. The daughters are not, to our thinking, so well rendered; while the Coreys, sterling silver as they ought to be, impress us instead as rather thin electro-plates. The Boston Brahmins have entered a good deal into literature of late, but so far without any brilliant results. According to their chroniclers, they spend most of their time discussing in what respects they are providentially differentiated from, their fellow-beings. Sometimes they put too fine a point upon it and wholly fail to make themselves felt. But then again their superior knowledge of the world is patent to the most careless observer. For instance, when Mrs. Corey pays a visit to Mrs. Lapham she apologizes for the lateness of the hour, explaining that her coachman had never been in that part of Boston before. This naturally casts an ineffaceable stigma upon the respectable square where the Laphams have hitherto resided, and shows that between the two ladies there is a great gulf fixed. Again, to point sharply social distinctions, young Corey says to his father,--

"I don't believe Mrs, Lapham ever gave a dinner."

"And with all that money!" sighed the father.

"I don't believe they have the habit of wine at table. I suspect that when they don't drink tea and coffee with their dinner they drink ice-water."

"Horrible!" said Bromfield Corey.

"It appears to me that this defines them."

The Coreys have the liveliest sense of all these _nuances_ of deviation from their standards, and strike us as rather amateurish, clever people who want to make sure of nice points and get on in the world, rather than as real flesh-and-blood aristocrats with the freedom and ease of acknowledged social supremacy.

While the Coreys try faithfully to compass the best that is known and thought in the world, the Laphams go to the other extreme, and touch depths of ignorance and vulgarity almost incredible for a family living in Boston with eyes to see, ears to hear, and, above all, money to spend. For a sort of superficial culture is a part of the modern inheritance, and seems to belong to the universal air. Even Penelope Lapham--the elder daughter, who is a girl of remarkable shrewdness and gifted besides with a keen satirical sense which makes her the family wit--is content to laugh at the family failings and provincialisms without any definite idea of how they might be corrected. But the Laphams are all the more interesting because they display no feeble and tentative gentilities. Mrs. Lapham's acceptance of Mrs. Corey's invitation to dinner, in which she signs herself "Yours truly, Mrs. S. Lapham," initiates some delightful scenes in the comedy. The colonel's resolution to go to the dinner in a frock-coat, white waistcoat, black cravat, and ungloved hands, and his eventual panicky substitution of correct evening dress regardless of cost, the anxieties of his wife and daughter on the question of suitable raiment, the great affair itself, when the colonel comes out in a new character,--all this part of the book shows in a high degree Mr. Howells's bright vein of humor.

But, putting aside the humor and comedy of "The Rise of Silas Lapham," the book has other points of value, and, as a study of a business-man whom success floats to the crest of the wave only to let him be overwhelmed by disaster as the surge retreats, presents a striking similitude to Balzac's "César Birotteau." In each case we find a self-made man elated by a sense of his commercial greatness, confident that the point he has already attained, instead of being the climax of his career, is the stepping-stone to yet greater wealth, besides social distinction. César Birotteau inaugurates what he believes to be his era of magnificence with a ball, while Silas Lapham tempts fortune by building a fine house on the back bay. Each hero projects his costly schemes in opposition to the wishes of a more sensible and prudent wife, and each, at the moment when fate seemed bent on crowning his ambition, falls a prey to a series of cruel and, in a way, undeserved misfortunes, and finds his well-earned commercial credit a mere house of cards which totters to its fall. Each man, broken and bankrupt, displays in his feebleness a moral strength he had not shown in his days of power: thus the name, "the _rise_ of Silas Lapham," means his initiation into a clearer and more exalted knowledge of his obligations to himself and to his kind. The moral of César Birotteau's "_grandeur et decadence_" strikes a still deeper key-note. Compared with Balzac, who is never trivial, and who has the most unerring instinct for character and motive, Mr. Howells wastes his force on non-essentials and is carried away by frivolities and prettinesses when he ought to be grappling with his work in fierce earnest. Balzac, whose unappeasable longing was to see his books the breviary, so to speak, of the people, would have laughed and cried with Silas, lived with him, loved with him, and come to grief with him, and forced his readers to do likewise. Mr. Howells is not so easily carried away by his creations, and is too apt to laugh at them instead of with them. But his mature work shows, nevertheless, a boldness and facility which ought to put the best results within its compass; and we confidently look for better novels from his pen than he has so far written, full of wit, humor, and cleverness, yet expanding outside of these gracful limitations into the fullest nature and freedom. — (from Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 )

Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka), 1859-1927

Told After Supper — MR. JEROME K. JEROME, or, more easily pronounced, "Mr. JERUMKY JERUM," is occasionally very amusing in his book for Christmastide, entitled Told After Supper. What he wants, that is, what he ought to have whether he wants it or not, is judicious editing. Had this process been applied to this eccentric haphazardy book, scarcely more than a third of it would have been published. "His style, in this book at least, and, for my part," says the Baron, "I say the same of his Three Men in a Tub, suggests the idea of his writing being the work of a young man who, among his companions and admirers, has earned the reputation of being a 'deuced funny chap,' and so has to struggle to live up to this reputation, or to live it down." JERUMKY JERUM still somewhat affects Yankee humour, not, however, in so forced and vulgar a manner as in his overpraised Three Men in a Boat. Two of the Ghost Stories are humorous, but their setting is unworthy of them. Had they been introduced into a tale as DICKENS (of whose style there is a very palpable attempt at imitation in the description of a stormy winter's night) brought in his story of Tom Smart, and of the inimitable Gabriel Grub, their mirth-raising value would have been considerably enhanced. As it is, these choice morsels—sandwich'd in between heavy slabs of doughy material—stand a chance of not being tasted. To anyone who comes across the book the Baron says, "read about the Curate and the Card-trick, and JOHNSON and EMILY. The tinted paper on which it is printed is a mistake, as are also most of the amateurish illustrations." — (from Punch, January 3, 1891 )

Diary of a Pilgrimage — The Diary of a Pilgrimage occupies 175 pages of one of ARROWSMITH's three-and-sixpenny books, and no doubt the admirers of its author, Mr. JEROME K. JEROME, may possibly not grudge this amount when gauging its value by its attractive cover. It is "'ARRY Abroad," that's all. 'ARRY Abroad laughs and talks loudly in foreign churches, sneers and jeers at everything he does not understand—and this includes the greater portion of all he sees and hears—chaffs puzzled officials, and everywhere makes himself highly and exceptionally popular. In this Diary 'ARRY is occasionally rather amusing when he is endeavouring to be either serious or sentimental, or both. 'ARRY serious or 'ARRY sentimental, or 'ARRY sentimentally serious and expecting to be taken at his own valuation, is of course delightful, only a little of it goes a great way, and this Cockney pilgrim goes too far, especially when giving us his valuable opinion on the Passion Play. 'ARRY on the Passion Play, and the character of JUDAS ISCARIOT! As Hedda Gabler's husband observes on every possible opportunity—"Fancy that!" Only once the Baron finds himself in agreement with the travelling 'ARRY, and this happens when he says, "I must candidly confess that the English-speaking people one meets with on the Continent are, taken as a whole, a most disagreeable contingent." Yes, certainly, when they are all 'Arries. Set an 'ARRY to catch an 'ARRY, and of course to the regular right-down 'ARRY all other 'ARRIES, not 'appnin' to 'ave the honour of being 'is own partics, are detestably vulgar cads. The remainder of the book, i.e., 131 pages, is padded with essays, a fact not mentioned on the outside of the work, which, like charity, covers a multitude of sins. Whether this is quite a fair way of stating contents, is a question which the Baron supposes both Publishers and Author have thoroughly considered. — (from Punch, May 16, 1891 )

Lang, Andrew, 1844-1912

Essays in Little — It is a pleasure for the Baron to be in perfect accord on any one point with the Author of Essays in Little, and in proportion to the number of the points so is the Baron's pleasure intensified. Most intending readers of these Essays, on taking up the book, would be less curious to ascertain what ANDREW LANG has to say about HOMER and the study of Greek, about THÉODORE BE BANVILLE, THOMAS HAYNES BAYLEY, the Sagas, and even about KINGSLEY, than to read his opinions on DICKENS and THACKERAY, placing DICKENS first as being the more popular. The Baron recommends his friends, then, to read these Essays of ANDREW's, beginning with THACKERAY, then DICKENS; do not, on any account, omit the delightfully written and truly appreciative article on CHARLES LEVER; after which, go as you please, but finish with "the last fashionable novel," wherein our M.A., in his Merriest-Andrewest mood, treats us to an excellent parody. — (from Punch, March 14, 1891 )

Angling Sketches — Angling Sketches, by ANDREW LANG—Andrew L'Angler—are delightful reading. The Baron pictures to himself the thoughtful and Balfour-like ANDREW on a bank by the river, rod stuck into ground, pencil and note-book in his hand. "What is he doing, my boy?" inquires the Baron, of the hook-baiting boy. "He's ketching sumthink," whispers the urchin. Is it Historical Notes on the Diet of Wurms? Is it necessary to show that the fish have no consciousness of Pain? Or, is he composing Lines to my Rod? Or is it a disquisition on "ingratitude," showing how the stream goes on murmuring? And does he classically remind it how silent it ought to be,—Dumb defluit annis? Or does the stream murmur because our ANDREW the Fisherman has been "whipping" it? Should he betake himself to fly-fishing, let his motto be "Strike and spare not!" and if he would be wise above his fellows in the gentle art of catching fish, let him consult The Incomplete Angler, says, disinterestedly, THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS. — (from Punch, November 21, 1891 )

Mackay, Isabel Ecclestone, 1875-1928

Up The Hill and Over — I can't help feeling that ISABEL ECCLESTONE MACKAY'S chief aim in Up the Hill and Over (HURST AND BLAOKETT) was to write a convincing tract for the times on a subject which is achieving unhappy prominence in America as in our own police-courts. A worthy aim, I doubt not. One of the chief characters is a drug-taker; and as if that were not enough another is "out of her head," while a third, Dr. Callandar, the Montreal specialist, is in the throes of a nervous breakdown. This seems to me to be distinctly overdoing it. It is the doctor's love-story (a story so complicated that I cannot attempt a précis) which is the designedly central but actually subordinate theme. I have the absurd idea that this might really have begun life as a pathological thesis and suffered conversion into a novel. The author has no conscience in the matter of the employment of the much-abused device of coincidence. And I don't think the story would cure anyone of drug-taking. On the contrary. — (from Punch, February 26, 1919 )

Mason, A. E. W. (Alfred Edward Woodley) 1865-1948

The Summons — t would appear that Mr. A. E. W. Mason is another of those who hold that the day of war-novels is not yet done. Anyhow, The Summons (Hodder and Stoughton) shows him dealing out all the old familiar cards, spies and counter-spies, submarines and petrol bases and secret ink. It must be admitted that the result is unexpectedly archaic. Perhaps also Mr. Mason hardly gives himself a fair chance. The "summons" to his hero (who, being familiar with the Spanish coast, is required when War breaks out to use this knowledge for submarine-thwarting) is too long delayed, and all the non-active service part of the tale suffers from a very dull love-interest and some even more dreary racing humour. Archaic or not, however, Hillyard’s anti-spy adventures, in an exquisite setting that the author evidently knows as well as his hero, are good fun enough. But the home scenes had (for me at least) a lack of grip and conviction by no means to be looked for from a writer of Mr. Mason’s experience. His big thrill, the suicide of the lady who first sends by car to the local paper the story of her end and then waits to confirm this by telephone before making it true, left me incredulous. I’m afraid The Summons can hardly be said to have found Mr. Mason in his customary form. — (from Punch, October 27, 1920 )

Maugham, W. Somerset (William Somerset), 1874-1965

The Moon and Sixpence — The Great Man is, I suppose, among the most difficult themes to treat convincingly in fiction. To name but one handicap, the author has in such cases to postulate at least some degree of acquaintance on the part of the reader with his celebrated subject. "Everyone is now familiar," he will observe, "with the sensational triumph achieved by the work of X——;" whereat the reader, uneasily conscious of never having heard of him, inclines to condemn the whole business beforehand as an impossible fable. I fancy Mr. SOMERSET MAUGHAM felt something of this difficulty with regard to the protagonist of his quaintly-called The Moon and Sixpence (HEINEMANN), since, for all his sly pretence of quoting imaginary authorities, we have really only his unsupported word for the superlative genius of Charles Strickland, the stockbroker who abandoned respectable London to become a Post-impressionist master, a vagabond and ultimately a Pacific Islander. The more credit then to Mr. MAUGHAM that he does quite definitely make us accept the fellow at his valuation. He owes this, perhaps, to the unsparing realism of the portrait. Heartless, utterly egotistical, without conscience or scruple or a single redeeming feature beyond the one consuming purpose of his art, Strickland is alive as few figures in recent fiction have been; a genuinely great though repellent personality—a man whom it would have been at once an event to have met and a pleasure to have kicked. Mr. MAUGHAM has certainly done nothing better than this book about him; the drily sardonic humour of his method makes the picture not only credible but compelling. I liked especially the characteristic touch that shows Strickland escaping, not so much from the dull routine of stockbroking (genius has done that often enough in stories before now) as from the pseudo-artistic atmosphere of a flat in Westminster and a wife who collected blue china and mild celebrities. Mrs. Strickland indeed is among the best of the slighter characters in a tale with a singularly small cast; though it is, of course, by the central figure that it stands or falls. My own verdict is an unhesitating stet. — (from Punch, May 7, 1919 )

Miller, Alice Duer, 1874-1942

Ladies Must Live — Of Ladies Must Live (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) one may say, in the first place, that it is fortunately unnecessary as well as unusual for the bulk of them to live in the scalp and tomahawk atmosphere that distinguishes the sexual and social rivalry of Christine Fennimer and Nancy Almar, the two beautiful American Society dames whose duel for the affections of the eligible hero form the plot, the whole plot and nothing but the plot of Miss ALICE DUER MILLER's latest book. Nature red in tooth and claw has not mothered them—they are too well-bred for that; they simply bite with their tongues. Mrs. Almar, who is married and purely piratical, comes off worst in the encounter, and the more artful Christine, ultimately falling in love with the object of her artifices, becomes human enough to marry him, despite his lapse from financial eligibility. The plot is a thin one, but smoothly and brightly unfolded. Unhappily Miss MILLER lacks the gift of delicate satire and the sense of humour that the society novel above all others seems to require. With a lighter and less matter-of-fact treatment one would accept more easily the overdrawing of her rather impossible felines. — (from Punch, February 19, 1919 )

Rice, Alice Caldwell Hegan, 1870-1942

Miss Mink's Soldier — I have a grudge against the publishers of Miss Mink's Soldier (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) because they have printed on its wrapper, "By the Author of Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," which led me, perhaps foolishly, to hope that Mrs. Wiggs and I were to foregather once more, and when we didn't made me just a little surly towards a book of short tales which, opened with any other expectation, would have seemed much above the average. There are eight stories in the book, and in almost all of them is found that blend of pathos and humour that Mrs. ALICE HEGAN RICE has taught us to expect. I liked "Cupid Goes Slumming," because it was almost Cabbage Patch; but "Hoodooed," the story of an old negro who believed himself the victim of a spell which involved the presence of a cricket in his leg, delighted me even more. His wife removes the charm with a vacuum cleaner, in which she has previously secreted a cricket, and the victim recovers. It pleased me very much to learn that among "white folk's superstitions" is the theory that it is "bad luck to sleep with the windows shet," and, when I come to think of it, I believe that it is very bad luck indeed. — (from Punch, Jan 1, 1919 )

Rinehart, Mary Roberts, 1876-1958

The Amazing Interlude — Little Sara Lee Kennedy, betrothed to one of those alert grim-jawed young Americans one sees in the advertising pages of The Ladies' Home Journal, learns of the suffering in Belgium at the beginning of the great War and finds she must do something about it. She can cook, so she will go and make soup for KING ALBERT's men. She takes her young man's photograph and his surly disapproval; also a few dollars hastily collected from her obscure township in Pa.; and becomes the good angel of a shattered sector of the Belgian line. And she finds in The Amazing Interlude (MURRAY) her prince—a real prince—in the Secret Service, and, after the usual reluctances and brave play (made for the sake of deferring the inevitable) with the photograph of the old love, is at last gloriously on with the new. It is a very charming love-story, and MARY ROBERTS RINEHART makes a much better thing of the alarms and excursions of war than you would think. It was no good, I found, being superior about it and muttering "Sentiment" when you had to blink away the unbidden tear lest your fireside partner should find you out. So let me commend to you this idealised vision of a corner of the great War seen through the eyes of an American woman of vivid sympathies. — (from Punch, February 19, 1919 )

Saki, 1870-1916

The Toys of Peace — When the literary Roll of Honour of all the belligerents comes to be considered quietly, in the steady light of Peace, not many names will stand higher in any country than that of our English writer, HECTOR HUGH MUNRO, whose subtle and witty satires, stories and fantasies were put forth under the pseudonym "SAKI." I have but to name The Chronicles of Clovis for discriminating readers to know what their loss was when MUNRO (who, although over age, had enlisted as a private and refused a commission) fell fighting in the Beaumont-Hamel action in November 1916. Mr. JOHN LANE has brought out, under the title The Toys of Peace, a last collection of "SAKI'S" fugitive works, with a sympathetic but all too brief memoir by Mr. ROTHAY REYNOLDS. Although "SAKI" is only occasionally at his very best in this volume—on the grim side, in "The Interlopers," and in his more familiar irresponsible and high-spirited way in "A Bread-and-Butter Miss" and "The Seven Cream Jugs;" although there may be no masterpiece of fun or raillery to put beside, say, "Esmé;" there is in every story a phrase or fancy marked by his own inimitable felicity, audacity or humour. It is good news that a complete uniform edition of his books is in preparation. — (from Punch, February 26, 1919 )

Sinclair, May. 1863-1946

The Romantic — How you regard Miss May Sinclair’s latest story, The Romantic (Collins), will entirely depend upon your attitude towards the long-vexed question of the permissible in art. If you hold that all life (which in this association generally means something disagreeable) is its legitimate province and that genius can transmute an ugly study of morbid pathology into a romance, you will admire the force of this vivid little book; otherwise, I warn you frankly, you are like to be repelled by the whole business. The title, to begin with, is an irony as grim as anything that follows, in what sense you will find as the story reveals itself. The Romantic is a picture—what do I say? a vivisection—of cowardice, seen through the horrified eyes of a woman who loved the subject of it. The scene is the Belgian battlefields, to which John Conway, being unfitted for active service, had taken out a motor-ambulance, with Charlotte Redhead as one of his drivers. All the background of this part of the tale is wonderfully realised, a thing of actual and unforgetable experience. Here gradually the first tragedy of Conway is made clear, though shielded and ignored as long as possible by the loyalty of fellow-workers and the obstinate disbelief of the girl. Perhaps you think I am making too much of it all; treacherous nerves were the lot of many spiritually noble men in that hell. But little by little conviction of a deeper, less understandable, horror creeps upon the reader, only to be explained and confirmed on the last page. To be honest, The Romantic is an ugly, a detestably ugly book, but of its cleverness there can be no question. — (from Punch, October 27, 1920 )

Stockton, Frank Richard 1834-1902

Rudder Grange — "Rudder Grange" is one of the books which it is essential to have always with us, and we are glad to see the stories so well illustrated, although the subject passes the domain of the artist, Mr. Stockton's humor being of that delicate and elusive order which strikes the inward and not the outward sense. "Pomona reading" in the wrecked canal-boat is a droll contribution, and many of the cuts show that the artist is in full harmony with the spirit of the author. — (from Lippincott's Magazine, December 1885 )

Tagore, Rabindranath, 1861-1941

The Home and the World — It is much harder, I am afraid, to be a good Bengali than a good Englishman. Nikhil, the Rajah of Sir RABINDRANATH TAGORE'S The Home and the World (MACMILLAN), persists in treating Sandip Babu (a convinced Nietzchean in philosophy and a Nationalist of the most inflammable type) as an honoured guest of his household, in spite of the fact that he differs from the fellow profoundly on every conceivable topic and is well aware, moreover, that Sandip is rapidly winning the heart of his Rani, Bimala. Nikhil, you see, considers that "all imposition of force is weakness," and that "only the weak dare not be just." Most Westerners, I think, would have kicked the rhapsodical and rather plausible agitator out-of-doors and felt all the better for it from the boot-toe upwards. The real truth is that the story, which is written in the form of a triple autobiography (Nikhil, Sandip and Bimala all taking a hand at telling it in turn) is an exposition of two views of Suadeshi, or what may be called the Sinn Fein movement in India. Nikhil is the apostle of "self-realisation" as a moral force; Sandip believes in grabbing whatever you can. The latter first deifies his country (Bande Mataram, or "Hail, Mother!" is the Nationalist motto) and then identifies Bimala with the object of his worship, which seems a very convenient theory. As for Bimala, she wavers between the two. The romantic interest of the book (which is, by the way, a translation) breaks down rather badly when it becomes clear that Sandip is not really a big enough man to make a complete conquest of the Rani; but from every other point of view it is supremely interesting. And if Nikhil might perhaps have been improved by a little less force of character and more of shoe-leather, Bimala , at any rate, is a delightful personage. — (from Punch, June 25, 1919 )

Tarkington, Booth, 1869-1946

The Magnificent Ambersons —We doubt whether Mr. BOOTH TARKINGTON'S many admirers on this side of the Atlantic will read The Magnificent Ambersons (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) with any great sense of satisfaction. George Minafer is a spoilt and egotistical cad, and as we pursue his unpleasant personality from infancy onward our impatience with the adoring relatives who allow the impossible little bounder to turn their lives to tragedy becomes more and more pronounced. In England his "come uppance" would have commenced at an early age and in the time-honoured place thereunto provided. But in the case of young American nabobs these corrective agencies are too often wanting, and though it is hard to believe that a sophisticated uncle, a soldier grandfather and various other relatives would have allowed a conceited and overbearing young boor to wreck his mother's life by separating her from a former sweetheart, it cannot be said that such cases have not existed or that the picture is altogether overdrawn. But we do not like George Minafer, and his final reconciliation with his own sweetheart and her father—the man whom ho has prevented his mother from marrying—leaves us cold. But if the characters are unpleasing the craftsmanship of The Magnificent Ambersons is of Mr. BOOTH TARKINGTON'S best, and his description "of the decline and fall of a locally supreme dynasty of plutocrats before the hosts of the Goths and Huns of spawning industrialism is almost a contribution to American social history. — (from Punch, March 5, 1919 )

Walpole, Hugh, Sir, 1884-1941

The Secret City — On the second page of The Secret City (MACMILLAN) Mr. HUGH WALPOLE (or, to be meticulously correct, Durward, into whose mouth the story is put) says that "there is no Russian alive for whom this book can have any kind of value except as a happy example of the mistakes that the Englishman can make about the Russian." Well, after finishing the book, which is in some ways a sequel to The Dark Forest, I felt so very disinclined to believe this statement that I consulted a Russian, who is very much alive, and received the opinion that, if Mr. WALPOLE has not succeeded in drawing the real average Russian, he has given us a type whose faults and virtues sound the keynote of the situation as it is to-day. Such an opinion is worth a thousand times more than any judgment of mine, and I am glad of the opportunity to record it. From a literary point of view it seems to me that Mr. WALPOLE, in allowing Durward to tell the tale, has created innumerable difficulties for himself—difficulties which to a great extent have been cleverly overcome, but which nevertheless make the story wobble dangerously and once or twice threaten it with devastation. To me, however, the interest never really flagged, for granted that one has a sympathy with Russia one feels acutely what Mr. WALPOLE is aiming at and how wonderfully he succeeds. It is not difficult to find faults: to complain, for instance, that a strong man like Semyonov would not have taken such elaborate measures to get himself killed; but these points are trivial in a book which is not to be read so much for its story as for its idea. And the idea is great. — (from Punch, Feb 12, 1919 )

Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900

Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and other stories — OSCAR WILDE has desisted for a space from mere paradox, and gives us (am I late in thus noticing it?) Lord Arthur Savile's Crime and other Stories. (London, J.R. OSGOOD, MCILWAINE & Co.) Macte virtute, say I; the tag is old, but 'twill serve. If you want to laugh heartily, read Lord Arthur Savile's Crime, the story of a deeply conscientious man to whom murder very properly presents itself as a duty. Then, if you wish to laugh even more violently, read The Canterville Ghost, in which OSCAR goes two or three better than Mr. W.S. GILBERT. I am specially thankful to OSCAR. When he is on humour bent, he doesn't dig me in the ribs and ask me to notice what a wonderfully funny dog he is going to be. He lets his fun take care of itself, a permission which it uses with great discretion. Please, OSCAR, give us some more of the same sort, and pray introduce me once more later on to the Duchess of Cheshire. If she continues to be as delightful as she was in her sweet girlhood, I envy his Grace. — (from Punch, September 19, 1891 )

On the Decay of Lying — Fascinating is OSCAR WILDE's paper "On the Decay of Lying," which is the first essay in a book of his entitled Intentions. If it be true that the art of lying is decaying—but, stay! how can anyone take the word of a professor of the art of lying for this or any other fact? No, his motto must be, "See me reverse." Not that by suggesting this motto I would for a moment be understood as expressing a wish for OSCAR's once again dropping into poetry—that OSCAR should once again take to the other sort of Lyre; far from it. No; let him remain the head professor of the gay science of mendacity in the Cretan College. Now, when a Professor and double M.A., i.e., Master of the Mendacious Art in the Cretan College, says or writes one thing, he must be taken as meaning exactly the opposite. Otherwise he is no Cretan, and must be degraded from his Professorship. Bearing this in mind, the essay is, as I have said, in matter most amusing, and in style charming. Remember, my reader, that whosoever and whatsoever is blamed, abused, or flouted in this essay, is really being praised, lauded, and adulated to the skies by the Cretan critic. But when the M.M.A. writes on other subjects, are we to trust him? there's the difficulty. So after the first essay, which is hereby recommended by the Faculty, the Baron puts the book aside. "Caute legendum," says THE BARON DE BOOK-WORMS. — (from Punch, May 30, 1891 )

The Picture of Dorian Gray — The Baron has read OSCAR WILDE'S Wildest and Oscarest work, called Dorian Gray, a weird sensational romance, complete in one number of Lippincott's Magazine. The Baron, recommends anybody who revels in diablerie, to begin it about half-past ten, and to finish it at one sitting up; but those who do not so revel he advises either not to read it at all, or to choose the daytime, and take it in homoeopathic doses. The portrait represents the soul of the beautiful Ganymede-like Dorian Gray, whose youth and beauty last to the end, while his soul, like JOHN BROWN'S, "goes marching on" into the Wilderness of Sin. It becomes at last a devilled soul. And then Dorian sticks a knife into it, as any ordinary mortal might do, and a fork also, and next morning "Lifeless but 'hideous' he lay," while the portrait has recovered the perfect beauty which it possessed when it first left the artist's easel. If OSCAR intended an allegory, the finish is dreadfully wrong. Does he mean that, by sacrificing his earthly life, Dorian Gray atones for his infernal sins, and so purifies his soul by suicide? "Heavens! I am no preacher," says the Baron, "and perhaps OSCAR didn't mean anything at all, except to give us a sensation, to show how like BULWER LYTTON'S old-world style he could make his descriptions and his dialogue, and what an easy thing it is to frighten the respectable Mrs. Grundy with a Bogie." The style is decidedly Lyttonerary. His aphorisms are Wilde, yet forced. Mr. OSCAR WILDE says of his story, "it is poisonous if you like, but you cannot deny that it is also perfect, and perfection is what we artists aim at." Perhaps; but "we artists" do not always hit what we aim at, and, despite his confident claim to unerring artistic marksmanship, one must hazard the opinion, that in this case Mr. WILDE has "shot wide." There is indeed more of "poison" than of "perfection" in Dorian Gray. The central idea is an excellent, if not exactly novel, one; and a finer art, say that of NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, would have made a striking and satisfying story of it. Dorian Gray is striking enough, in a sense, but it is not "satisfying" artistically, any more than it is so ethically. Mr. WILDE has preferred the sensuous and hyperdecorative manner of "Mademoiselle DE MAUPIN," and without GAUTIER'S power, has spoilt a promising conception by clumsy unideal treatment. His "decoration" (upon which he plumes himself) is indeed "laid on with a trowel." The luxuriously elaborate details of his "artistic hedonism" are too suggestive of South Kensington Museum and æsthetic Encyclopædias. A truer art would have avoided both the glittering conceits, which bedeck the body of the story, and the unsavoury suggestiveness which lurks in its spirit. Poisonous! Yes. But the loathly "leperous distilment" taints and spoils, without in any way subserving "perfection," artistic or otherwise. If Mrs. Grundy doesn't read it, the younger Grundies do; that is, the Grundies who belong to Clubs, and who care to shine in certain sets wherein this story will be much discussed. "I have read it, and, except for the ingenious idea, I wish to forget it," says the Baron. — (from Punch, July 19, 1890 )