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Yardley, Maud H.Sinless. *$1. Fenno.

An emotional story growing out of the almost inconceivable situation of an unconscious exchange of wives. Two men return to England and their wives after ten years residence in India. That the wife of one should greet the husband of the other, be accepted in turn as his wife and neither find out the mistake for sometime seems a little short of impossible. The confusion is aided by the fact that both women responded to “Nell,” and both men were named “Kenyon.”

“Miss Yardley nurses her material with such skill and keeps her secret so well that the close of the chapter, where she allows the truth to burst on us, is a triumph of dramatic effect.”

“The improbability is redeemed by the very delicate way in which the consequent tragedy is handled.”

“After [the first twenty-five pages] the story flows languidly in a stream of verbosity.”

Yeats, William Butler.Poetical works. 2v. v. 1. **$1.75. Macmillan.

6–43534.

This is a volume of Mr. Yeats’ lyrical poems, and will be followed in the spring by a second containing his dramas. Here are to be found “Ballads and lyrics,” “The wanderings of Oisin,” “The rose,” “The wind among the reeds,” “In seven woods,” “The old age of Queen Meave,” and “Baile and Aillinn.”

“Not all Mr. Yeats’s gifts of music and Celtic magic avail to make the volume other than a little tedious.” Ferris Greenslet.

“It seems doubtful whether in the mass Mr. Yeats’ lyrical poetry can be appreciated save by a cult or will be remembered save by the curious. Yet there are fine things in the volume.”

“The fact that he is occasionally carried away by his love for the old fairy legends of his native land must not be held against him. It is only occasionally that he transcends common sense and loses sight of reason in a fog of mysticism.” Bliss Carman.

“Foremost—indeed, as far as permanent value goes, entirely alone—in this year’s output stands the volume of Mr. Yeats’s collected dramas.” Louise Collier Willcox.

“For Mr. Yeats’s poetry I have more respectful sympathy than liking. I wish I liked it better. I feel quite sure that it deserves affection. Often in phrases and occasionally in whole lyrics it is exquisite. And it is always admirable in intention, but, somehow, it lacks something. It does not give the thrill. It is wanting in the pull on the heart.”

“Here the intangible, the illusive and elusive weave their shadowy world, and one knows not when he returns from it what shapes he has met; but he knows that he has been in an enchanted place and that his spirit was stirred.” Jessie B. Rittenhouse.

Yost, Casper S.Making of a successful husband: letters of a happily married man to his son. **$1. Dillingham.

7–24184.

“The book is in the form of letters from a father who has found marriage a success to his son. They begin with the young man’s announcement of his engagement, and are carried on through indefinite intervals of time as the young husband makes known one and other problems of married life. The letters consider the questions of boarding or keeping house, the wife’s allowance, the bride’s relations, should women work, and other practical and sentimental matters.”—N. Y. Times.

“They are all written in an easy, natural style, enlivened with anecdotes, and show much common sense of an up-to-date variety.”

*Yost, Casper S.Making of a successful wife. **$1. Dillingham.

7–36141.

The letters of a father to his daughter give some interesting advice, plenty of humor and a good deal of marital philosophy. “In the first letter John Sneed gives his consent to the marriage of his daughter, and in those ensuing he advises her on his problems of married life.” (N. Y. Times.)

“The tenth [letter] deals with [the problem] of raising a family, and presents homely truths in a pleasant fashion.”

Young, Alexander Bell Filson.Christopher Columbusand the New world of his discovery. 2v. *$6.50. Lippincott.

7–3929.

“The central object of Mr. Young’s work is to reveal to the reader what he conceives to be the personality of Columbus. He has tried to discover, from a reverent examination of monographs, histories, essays, memoirs, and controversies, what Columbus did and what he was. In order that his portrait might not lack reality, he has endeavored to bring out even his hero’s defects.”—Lit. D.

“It is picturesquely, vivaciously and vigorously written, with here and there a touch reminiscent of Carlyle. He does not, however, strike us as an infallible witness, and ‘modern historical research,’ which may dispose of Washington Irving, is not perhaps always on the side of Mr. Filson Young.”

“The most serious deficiency in Mr. Young’s work is not its occasional errors, but its great lack of the true historical spirit of interpretation. It is the work of a clear and versatile writer, but not of a historical scholar. It will amuse and interest the general reader and not seriously mislead him as to the career of Columbus, but from it he will gain little instruction in historical interpretation.” E. G. B.

“Is deserving of high praise, and upon the whole it is trustworthy, notwithstanding the conjectural details which are introduced in order to impart life and colour to the little that is known of the early days of Columbus.”

“The one great and glaring defect of Mr. Young’s work lies in the spirit of levity that more or less pervades it.” Anna Heloise Abel.

“The knowledge of motives and mental processes of Columbus which Filson Young displays in his new two-volume life of the navigator is enough to make the world of Columbian scholarship stand aghast.”

“Mr. Young can tell a story tersely, rapidly and vividly when he chooses. But he seldom chooses so to tell it. He is too prone to listen to that demonic whisper which bids him tell it with abundance of florid embroidery; so that where we look for Columbus and his deeds, adventures, and sufferings, we too often find Mr. Filson Young and his words, conjectures, and fond inventions.”

“The defects of his own work illustrate the inevitable weakness of history written by one who has not saturated himself with its materials. No student of the Columbus narratives will fail to find in [the Earl of Dunraven’s] valuable essay an explanation of many things left partly or wholly in the dark by the editors of Columbus’s writings.”

“Nothing has come from the presses recently which is able to give a deeper insight into the character of the discoverer of America than the two-volumed work of Filson Young just issued.”

“It is our opinion that he has pressed the theories of the picturesque school to a dangerous extreme, and he could have attained his purpose with even greater surety, and without any sacrifice of the dramatic elements of the story, by writing with more restraint.”

“The book, take it for all in all, is interesting although badly written, and its unflinching, almost infernal honesty of purpose places it far above the too-abundant crop of ‘Memoirs,’ ‘Lifes’ and ‘Notes’ about the doings of quite unimportant men, which literally stuff the libraries.” R. B. Cunninghame Graham.

Young, Alexander Bell Filson.Mastersingers. *$1.25. Lippincott.

“A republication, with some additions, of a series of essays on musical subjects which appeared several years ago and which has therefore won something more than ephemeral recognition in England and America.... Some of the essays are ‘programme’ interpretations of great symphonies like Beethoven’s Pastoral and Tschaikowsky’s Pathetic; ‘Tristan and and Isolde’ is a more objective description of Wagner’s great drama of love and death; and ‘The spirit of the piano’ is a very just appreciation of Chopin’s genius.”—Dial.

“As the work of so youthful a writer ... these papers display a remarkable maturity of thought and even world wisdom; and the fervid intensity of many passages is intelligible and excusable.” Josiah Renick Smith.

“They are agreeable and somewhat highly wrought examples of the ‘subjective,’ literary criticism.” Richard Aldrich.

Young, Alexander Bell Filson.Wagner stories **$1.30. McClure.

The stories of the Wagner operas from “Flying Dutchman” to “Parsifal” are told “for the benefit of those idle people who go to the opera without having taken the trouble to read the poem on which the music is founded. They are the larger proportion of audiences, and this handy guide to knowledge ought to help them. They will get not only a very good idea of the stories themselves, but a fairly definite idea, in Mr. Eric Maclagan’s metrical translations of detached passages, of that curious amalgam which Wagner constructed out of partly poetical and partly musical elements.”—(Sat. R.)

“Both useful and attractive.”

“A serious book for young people but the old tales are well told in a manner that older people will find interesting.”

“The writing of Mr. Young’s book is done with fluency, and is best when it tries least to ‘be inspired with some breadth of the emotional atmosphere which it is the peculiar quality of Wagner’s music to produce.’”

Young, Egerton Ryerson.Battle of the bears. †$1.50. Wilde.

7–27029.

Mr. Young’s stories of life in the northland all aim to catch and hold aspects of life which are fast disappearing as civilization penetrates the wilderness haunts of wolves and bears. “His pictures of nature as he saw it in that frozen world are remarkable, while the makeshifts to which he was forced to resort, the privations which he had to endure, give to the reader an insight into life in this north country such as has never been before portrayed.”

Young, Rida Johnson, and Coleman, Gilbert P.Brown of Harvard. †$1.50. Putnam.

7–18595.

“The quite simple story of Brown, who is wrongfully suspected by his sweetheart and her mother, suffers in silence to shield the quite stereotyped villain, who would have been much more wisely dealt with if his weakness had had the tonic of publicity, and who inevitably wins the boat race.”—N. Y. Times.

“The lively plot, full of ingenious and surprising incidents, and the very striking dénouement make the reader unwilling to lay down the book until he has finished it.”

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