NOVELS

Long agoIn their towersThe clocks struckOld hoursThat went so slowLong agoIn George Hubert's parsonageThe wood-fire of old apple-treesIt flamed and flared and flickered so.Long agoAt Hampton Court in the mild sunIn the tall limes great clumps were hungOf mistletoe*****Long agoPeace has fallen upon the painThe grief, the madness of these twain,Lovely lovers by Love slain,Long ago.

Long agoIn their towersThe clocks struckOld hoursThat went so slow

Long agoIn George Hubert's parsonageThe wood-fire of old apple-treesIt flamed and flared and flickered so.

Long agoAt Hampton Court in the mild sunIn the tall limes great clumps were hungOf mistletoe

*****

Long agoPeace has fallen upon the painThe grief, the madness of these twain,Lovely lovers by Love slain,Long ago.

In some ways Miss Ruth Manning-Sanders' work is more ambitious than Mr. Nevinson's or Mr. Gales'; but if she essays more, she performs, if anything, less. There is evident in her work an ardent searching of the spirit and a philosophical tendency that are worthy of praise, but nowhere are her emotions and thoughts transmuted into poetry's gold by any magical touch. We have, in other words, much of the raw material of poetry spread out before us, but not poetry itself. Nevertheless, there is a distinctive quality in her work which has affinities with some seventeenth-century poems; it is present in the poem entitledEmotions, which begins thus:

Spirits to whom my lady's little worldIs but a tree of rest,Whence birdlike free, ye rise and soarEach on your several questAbove the heavy hills that close aroundMy strip of ground,

but does not keep at that level.

It may be that Miss Ruth Manning-Sanders will achieve considerably more than she has so far succeeded in doing.

The frontispiece of this volume is as crowded with names as a modern theatre programme; we looked at the top for "licensee" and "lessee." But, unlike the plays, the book is good. Serbia, which has several great cycles of epic-ballads, is the onecountry where the creation of poetry on primitive lines still flourishes; a cycle seems to be developing out of the retreat through Albania. The greatest group of all, however, is the group which grew out of the defeat (in 1389) by the Turks on the "Field of Blackbirds." The originals (and Miss Rootham's versions) are all in trochaic decasyllabics. They deal with one group of figures: the Tsar Lazar, who was killed; his wife Militsa; the hero Milosh Obilish, who stabbed the victorious Sultan in his tent; Jug Bogdan, his ten sons, and the traitor Vuk Brankovitch. The warriors march off, they are defeated, they die: ravens or other messengers carry the news to the stricken Tsaritsa in her tower: teamsters years after find the Tsar's head, still preserved in a well, and it miraculously joins the body. All a nation's sorrow is in these songs, all the great memories and defiant resolve, that kept the race alive and proud, and led the recapturers of Kossovo, in our own day, to fall to their knees on the sacred ground. The translation seems very good; the fire remains in the whole, but the magic has inevitably escaped from the parts. We can only quote a specimen at random:

To his feet leaps Milosh, that great warrior,To the black earth bows himself, and answers:"Tsar Lazar, for this thy toast I thank thee,Thank thee for the toast and for the goblet,But for those thy words I do not thank thee.For—else may the truth be my undoing—Never,Tsar Lazar, was I unfaithful,Never have I been, and never will be.And to-morrow I go to KossovoFor the Christian faith to fight and perish.

We may heartily congratulate Mr. Thorley upon his ambition and his industry. He conceived the prodigious idea of giving English versions of poems by all the representative French poets from the earliest age until our own time. He has translated three hundred, and he has increased his labours by doing the earlier ones into archaic English. For example, his first specimen (twelfth century) is entitledThe Twa Systres, and begins:

The mirk did fa' lang syne, lang syne,When twa fond systres wi' hands that twineWent down to bathe whaur the waters shine.

And Villon's most famous ballade opens:

O tell me where and in what landeIs Flora and the Roman lass?

He knows his ground, and his selection of originals is admirable. But his versions usually take the bloom off. Baudelaire's

O Mort, vieux capitaine, il est temps, levez l'ancre

becomes

Haul up the anchor, captain old, O Death, for it is time:

which is the same thing with a difference. Sometimes he even fails to get essential parts of the sense. In recommending his book, therefore, to those many to whom such a survey in English would be useful, we warn them that the translations at best are graceful versifying. Mr. Thorley, happily, is usually on his own highest level, and the book can be read with very little annoyance and a certain amount of edification.

The title of this anthology is presumably ironical. He who would have a comprehensive selection of war poems reflecting the sentiments of the mass of our people, and most of the British soldiers, must go to Miss Jacqueline Trotter'sVision and Valour(Longmans'), which we shall review in our next issue. This collection is a collection with an avowedly propagandist aim. It contains poems exposing the cruelty and filth of War in general, which were inspired by the late War. It is not yet complete. For instance, Major Brett-Young'sBête Humainemight suitably have been included. But most of the poems included are genuine and well written. Amongst the authors "covered" are "A. E.," Paul Bewsher, Geoffrey Dearmer, Walter de la Mare, Wilfrid Gibson, Laurence Housman, Margaret Sackville, Siegfried Sassoon, Dora Sigerson, and Alec Waugh.

InAn Imperfect MotherMr. J. D. Beresford has set himself the extraordinarily difficult and delicate task of describing a mother's unorthodoxy as seen by her grown-up children. Of Mr. Beresford it can generally be said that he is quite fearless of the troubles he makes for himself. Yet in this particular instance some doubt might be left in the reader's mind as to whether his designing of the book was hurried or certain obvious issues deliberately shirked. Some compromise may be arrived at between the two alternatives when we consider the overwhelming evidence of this author's sincerity and his inflexible allegiance to his art. Here the reader cannot fail to ask himself—what would I do—what could I say, if my mother had run off with someone?—well knowing that in an enormous preponderance of cases such a question is comfortably absurd. It is even indecent to put such a question to yourself, is it not? It is the defilement of a sacred place? Exactly. So is the book condemned at the very outset because its theme is "disagreeable" or "delicate" or "unusually unpleasant"? That is where one's first doubts of Mr. Beresford's complete fearlessness are bred. In his treatment of that disagreeable idea there is nothing disagreeable. You feel that there should be. Mr. Beresford has gilded his pill with a sugar of a too vigorous refinement. He has been at pains too great to disguise the fact of its nastiness.

What did these children think and do? The boy Stephen, just leaving school, is the only one that counts for much, though his two sisters, sketchy as is their appearance in the story, are excellently considered. Before the actual crash comes they whisper together about their mother's goings on, try to make their father speak of what they believe should be uppermost in his mind, and insist on a full discussion with Stephen. One of them was a school teacher, the other subsequently married an elderly chemist. In a way they enjoy the scandal; you feel that some excitement has come into their dull lives, with the piquancy of self-righteousness added to outraged innocence. They want to make the most of it. They are not genuinely ashamed.

Emily turned the embarrassment of her steady gaze immovably upon her father."I don't know what's come to mother lately," she said.Mr. Kirkwood began to fidget with his sparse little beard. "She's a little out of sorts, perhaps," he hazarded feebly."Well, oughtn't we todosomething, father?" Emily continued, still pinning him with her stare."Oh! Whatcanyoudo?" put in Stephen irritably....Emily turned herself about and focused her attention upon her brother. "If she's out of sorts she ought to see a doctor," she said."Thatwouldn't be any good," Stephen returned without hesitation."Well, but why wouldn't it?" Emily inquired, with a meaning in her tone that could not be mistaken."No good asking me," was Stephen's evasion."Well, I think it's time something was done," Emily said, sharpening the point of her now obvious intention."I don't know what you mean, Emily," little Kirkwood put in nervously.Emily knew, they all three knew, that their father's remark had been intended as a reminder that any open discussion of a mother's failings was impossible between father andchildren; but Emily had made up her mind that the time had come when they must, in her own phrase, "face the facts.""I don't think it'srightfor us to let things go on and not make any effort to stop them," she said in a low but determined voice. "I don't see the good of our going on pretending, when we all know perfectly well what's happening. Do you, Hilda?""No, I don't," Hilda emphatically agreed.

Emily turned the embarrassment of her steady gaze immovably upon her father.

"I don't know what's come to mother lately," she said.

Mr. Kirkwood began to fidget with his sparse little beard. "She's a little out of sorts, perhaps," he hazarded feebly.

"Well, oughtn't we todosomething, father?" Emily continued, still pinning him with her stare.

"Oh! Whatcanyoudo?" put in Stephen irritably....

Emily turned herself about and focused her attention upon her brother. "If she's out of sorts she ought to see a doctor," she said.

"Thatwouldn't be any good," Stephen returned without hesitation.

"Well, but why wouldn't it?" Emily inquired, with a meaning in her tone that could not be mistaken.

"No good asking me," was Stephen's evasion.

"Well, I think it's time something was done," Emily said, sharpening the point of her now obvious intention.

"I don't know what you mean, Emily," little Kirkwood put in nervously.

Emily knew, they all three knew, that their father's remark had been intended as a reminder that any open discussion of a mother's failings was impossible between father andchildren; but Emily had made up her mind that the time had come when they must, in her own phrase, "face the facts."

"I don't think it'srightfor us to let things go on and not make any effort to stop them," she said in a low but determined voice. "I don't see the good of our going on pretending, when we all know perfectly well what's happening. Do you, Hilda?"

"No, I don't," Hilda emphatically agreed.

But with Stephen it is different. He really cares very little about appearances, though he dreads facing his schoolfellows. He is wounded because his mother prefers another man to his father and himself. And there is an occasion when he might have changed his mother's decision had he known. Does he really want her, does he need her? she asks herself. And just on that very day Stephen had been smiled upon by the little daughter of his headmaster. She is fourteen, he seventeen. Impossible dreams fill his mind. He has said nothing to his mother, but she knows. As though she had seen the whole of the little trifling play enacted—for it was no more than one bright smile cast over a dainty shoulder; no word had been spoken—she knew that another interest had come, since yesterday, into the boy's life. He doesn't need her any more. His protestations would have been passionate had they been genuine. She goes.

The view of the children towards the problem must depend entirely upon their upbringing and the degree of sensitiveness in their relation to their mother. In regard to Cecilia Kirkwood's family, Mr. Beresford has expected a good deal of our faith in him. They were born and bred in a small cathedral town, their father was a bookseller, their degree was humble but respectable. Yet from beginning to end Stephen can only find it in his heart to think of his mother's flight as a callous desertion. He appears to be completely oblivious of the moral involved and of all that is implied by his mother's running away with the handsome organist. A closer scrutiny would have been horrible! Yes: but would not Stephen have made it, and, unpleasant or not, should there not be in the story some indication that he did make it?

To speak of a "handsome organist" is, in passing, liable to misconstruction, for Dr. Threlfall was not only good-looking but clever and accomplished in manner; not only an organist, for when he left Medboro' he gave up playing the organ for the composition of light opera, and became an emphatic success. Taking Cecilia for granted, we can well imagine that she would run away with Threlfall, and would do all the other things that Mr. Beresford makes her do, and talk as she does. But it is hard for the reader to take her for granted, just as it was hard for her neighbours in Medboro'. Cecilia's father was a philosophic tuner of pianos. He had been against her marriage in the first instance, but he rather approves of her adultery ... but it is understood that the nature of piano-tuners is warped.

Cecilia was an amazing wife for a country bookseller, and she tries, one sometimes thinks, to begrande damein conversation, setting the whole of the little provincial town by the ears with her outlandish brilliance and daring, making it grovel at her feet because of her beauty and amiability.

Can a lady kiss her toe?

Yes; she might—she might do so—sang another novelist, who indulged in rhyme. So it is with Cecilia; she might, she might have done so, but Mr. Beresford has failed to make it inevitable of her.

Old Kirkwood, the father, dies insane, and Stephen, adopted by a rich builder who was sympathetic because his own wife was a little difficult, works hard and finally superintends the erection of a big newspaper office in London. There he falls in with his mother once more, and with the schoolmaster's daughter who had smiled upon him long ago. The old tussle is re-enacted. The mother is jealous of the girl. She sees her son blundering in his courtship, and she only has to hold her tongue to keep him byher side, a devoted slave. She is not happy. Her organist-composer is jovial, but unfaithful. She longs for the fealty of Stephen. At this point Mr. Beresford introduces a little Freudian interest in the explanation of what was, for all he says about it, a matter of secondary importance to Stephen—his disgust at his mother's hysterical and untimely laughter, and we feel that, whilst he was about it, he might have examined Cecilia's psyche a little more thoroughly. There were one or two dark places in her character and disposition upon which a more searching light might, with some profit to the story, have been thrown. There is much enjoyable reading inAn Imperfect Mother, but on the whole, coming from Mr. Beresford, it is a little disappointing.

InEli of the DownsMr. C. M. A. Peake introduces himself to the public with a distinguished piece of work. He has been content to make his own variation of the archetype of great stories—the joys and sorrows at home, the adventures, and, finally, the return of the wanderer. This is the story of Eli Buckle, as gleaned by the teller from Eli himself, and from his old friend and neighbour Anne Brown, and it is the story of a perfectly simple and sincere man, a shepherd, who is perfectly happy in the remote solitudes which his calling entails upon him, with the wild flowers which arouse feelings his creator does not try to make him express. He is proud and happy when as a boy of twenty-one he has saved five pounds. These facts are simply stated, and yet there is not the least hint of sentimentality or of bathos. He marries the girl of his heart, and unexpectedly the knowledge comes to him of what he has been in need. "Oh, Mary, my dear, my dear!" he whispered. "You won't never know how lonely I've a-been." A little while goes by and he is lonely again, for while he is out in the night in the lambing season Mary falls from a chair, and by the time Eli gets home she and the child that should have been born to them are dead.

After that, in sheer desperation, Eli leaves his old home and goes away to sea. His is the old quest of a wounded man for the purpose which lies behind all events. Once before, when Mary had told him that he could be a preacher if he had the ambition, he had for a moment found his voice.

"... I believe I could study fast enough, and I know I could preach. I could make them listen to me; aye, have 'em all gaping after me like a nest of young thrushes, if I chose. But I'd have to tell 'em what they wanted to hear, an' dress it up the way they likes, which is what they mean by the Gospel and the Truth. But that I won't do, for I'm not sure that their Gospel is my Gospel, or their Truth any Truth at all for the matter o' that. And about God, my dear. Whether He is, or whether He isn't, what folks say, I can't testify till I know, know of my own knowledge, and not because I read it in a book or someone told me."

Occasionally the narrator of the story makes a little confidence to the reader which, apart from its humorous candour, serves a definitely useful purpose.

Now the scenes of Eli's childhood were the scenes I lived among when I too was a child, and the land where he spent the years of his middle age I knew and loved, as youth and man, but though I have crossed many waters, I am no sailor, and I cannot see the ocean as a mariner sees it.

In the course of his life as a sailor Eli has many adventures, which are wonderfully told, dramatic without one word of melodrama. Here the author who can lovingly describe the wild flowers in the lost corners of the Downs excels again, for in a few words he can truthfully describe how a particular species of liar describes himself, or how nervousness passes into wild terror in the eyes of a San Francisco crimp who is discovered trying to drug his victims. But well as Mr. Peake describes the rascalities of the adventurous life, he is more at home with the kindlinesses of the countryside and the gentle wisdom of Cathay. This is a novel, uneven in quality to be sure, but touching at certain points real beauty.

Mr. Hugh F. Spender inThe Bannerdescribes a revolution in England, organised by the League of Youth, backed by the People's Army, and inspired by Helen Hart, daughter of a millionaire, who has a bias against the landed gentry. Most elderly people in the book come in for a good deal of facetiousness directed against their ponderously old-fashioned views. One young lordling, deaf and dumb from shell shock, has his senses restored by the mere sight of the new Joan of Arc, and falls in love with her. She refuses him at first because she is vowed to The Cause.... "For a moment she resisted, resisted almost fiercely, and then she lay passively like a child in his arms." Mr. Spender has invented a young man who willingly throws up both title and title-deeds at the call of the People and becomes plain Citizen; but it is a pity that the author in creating another peer should have given him an existing name. Regarded either as fiction or as propaganda this is a poor book.

Roast Beef, Mediumis the curious title that Miss Edna Ferber has given to the Business Adventures of Emma McChesney. This American authoress, who writes vivaciously in her own language, gives bright and cheerful expression to her belief that people should be earnest and good and that Roast Beef (not too underdone is conveyed by "medium") should as a staple diet take precedence of flaked crab meat with Russian sauce. These business adventures are certainly notcaviare. Emma McChesney is a bagwoman, representing T. A. Buck's Featherloom Petticoats. Rivals make love to her and try to get the better of her alternately, and she has a young cub of a son to support. Very sick of hotel life, she longs for a house of her own—especially a kitchen. In the last chapter she gets them. The book is full of homely advice. Emma was fresh and wholesome in appearance, though not so young as the picture on the wrapper deceitfully indicates. But she was a good sort and refused to Marry T. A. Buck himself because she didn't love him. She was, in fact, a "worth-while" woman.

Mr. Notcutt, who is professor of English in the University of Stellenbosch, believes thatEndymionenshrines an allegory, or at least that it contains, in a clear unbroken stream beneath the surface, a meaning that corresponds with the ideas that filled the poet's mind. The alternative can hardly be impugned; it is as true of Keats as of most poets, and in the interpretation of Professor Notcutt it appears to mean little more than that there is a general reflection of the ardour of the poet's mind and his desire of beauty and beauty's immortality. If it is a question of allegorising to a greater extent than that vague generality, then Keats is surely the last poet who can be taxed with it. Professor Notcutt recognises some of the objections and says that the reason why Keats did not explain his allegory was that he was dissatisfied with the poem and discouraged by its reception; but that does not explain why, in the intimacy of his letters (many of which allude toEndymion) he did not give a hint to anybody that there was an allegory to explain. The letters, indeed, with which Professor Notcutt shows an excellent familiarity, speak freely of imagination and invention, in reference toEndymion, but of recondite suggestions and esoteric gospelling there is nothing. Nor can we regret this. A heavenly meaning attached to the earthly story would not have madeEndymiona better but a worse poem. It is one of the most beautiful, if one of the most faulty, poems in the language. It was Keats's privilege to see and create beauty and present it as a finer reality in the midst of the crude and half-unreal realities of common life. Had he lived he might have enlarged even this office in fulfilling it, but it is sufficient thatEndymionshows that he could fulfil it.

For most of us Cervantes is Don Quixote: even if we are familiar withThe Exemplary Novelsand theJourney to Parnassus, we do not get from them any idea of personality which infringes on the overwhelming effect produced by the Knight of La Mancha. Even Mr. Schevill, who is a Professor of Spanish Literature in the University of California, in his effort to give us an idea of Cervantes only succeeds in producing an idealised portrait of Don Quixote. How odd this is can be realised if we try to think of other imaginative authors in the terms of their characters. If we are tempted to think of Shakespeare as Hamlet, we immediately correct ourselves by recollections of Falstaff, of Prospero, of Coriolanus, or Juliet. No one, however much he may be persuaded that thePapers of the Clubare the author's best book, begins to compare Dickens with Pickwick; nor, to take an author nearer Cervantes in time, has one any inclination to identify Rabelais withPantagruel.

Two explanations of this odd fact about Cervantes are possible: one is that he had exhausted his capacity for creative, imaginative work in the writing ofDon Quixote—but this view cannot be upheld by anyone who loves theExemplary Novels. The other is the simple one that Cervantes was Don Quixote. It is a commonplace of psychology, especially of Catholic psychology, that men of fine temperament will always be severer on faults which are their own. Cervantes found in himself the exaggerated chivalry which he starts to mock, but still loves in Don Quixote. He had the Crusader's heart, but he lived in a time when—paceMr. Chesterton—the Crusading spirit was dead,or knew the uglier ends. So in his immortal story Cervantes presents the last knight with tonic humour and loving laughter. Ultimately nothing can make anyone ridiculous but success and prosperity; and from these Cervantes preserves his hero. Mr. Schevill's book is not very lively reading. He gives us the facts of Cervantes' life, and his treatment of Cervantes' art in comparison with other Spanish popular works of the period has no like value for English readers. At one time Spanish literature was well known in England, but to-day we have no doubt that Mr. Schevill's detailed accounts ofLa LazarilloandLa Celestinoare necessary.

Tolstoy himself might have been imagined by Cervantes. That is the thought that occurs in reading Mr. Noyes's book directly after Mr. Schevill's. Apart from that, no two great artists could be more dissimilar. Tolstoy is always uneasy. It is his uneasiness which caused his quarrel with Turgenev. It is his uneasiness which makes it impossible for him to remain steadfast to his own convictions. For years there was a false idea of Tolstoy, which is only gradually yielding to the facts. He was neither saint nor prophet; but an ordinary man with a capacity for self-analysis enormously magnified—so magnified that he seems a giant. It is this huge quality which makes so many critics, as Mr. Noyes, class him far beyond Turgenev and Dostoevsky, and put him in a position which he is willing to occupy in the future. Of direct personal criticism Mr. Noyes gives us little. He is overcome by the amount of his material, and is too fond of approaching his subject through the books of other critics. For instance, he quotes Mereshkovsky's comment on the end ofWar and Peace, as if it was alocus classicusonNatasha'spsychology, instead of a piece of ill-natured criticism on a great artist by a showman. The end ofWar and Peace, which shows us Natasha absorbed in Cervantes' life, is the same criticism on wars, grandeurs, and world-spooks as is made by Hardy's poem onThe Breaking of Nations; and neither has any cynicism in it. Mr. Noyes's picture of Tolstoy the man adds nothing to Aylmer Maude's exhaustive volumes; and he values too seriously and literally a great deal of Tolstoy's detailed religious writing. His book is, however, worth having, even if only for the superb lines written by Tolstoy to some abject person who objected toResurrectionas "smutty." We will not give his name, but he was, alas! English. Tolstoy, writing in English, defends himself and then says:

When I wrote the book I abhorred with all my heart the lust, and to express this abhorrence was one of the chief aims of the book. If I have failed in it I am very sorry, and I am pleading guilty if I was so inconsiderate in the scene of which you write that I could have produced such a bad impression on your mind. I think that we will be judged by our consciences and by God, not for the results of our ideas, which we cannot know, but for our intentions, and I hope my intentions were not bad.

Did ever great artist humble himself so generously? His attacker, with his unpleasant mind, will be numbered with the excellent Mr. Hyde, who inspired Stevenson to his defence of Damien.

Mr. Koch's amply illustrated book is, in the main, a record of the achievements in the war of the American Library Association. As such it is exhaustive, if rather wanting in variety. The soldiers' demand for books, after all, and gratitude for their bestowal, were much the same in America as in France, in the trenches as in hospitals, so that by the time he has finished this book the reader is somewhat wearied by the repetition of feats of distribution, surveys of the vast literary field covered, instances of literaryrecalcitrance overcome by deft suggestion and so forth. Nevertheless, it is a book of considerable interest and will bear permanent witness to the fact that, in all future wars, libraries will have to be mobilised with the armies. Over and over again the fact, which we have all learned, is insisted on that food for the mind is one of the most important sustainers of moral. Not only is reading an anodyne, but it is a disinfectant and a prophylactic, as necessary in war as chloroform, lysol, and anti-typhoid vaccine. In all that vast organisation of intense welfare—work which, spasmodic and fragmentary in peace, was by a supreme irony perfected in war—the supplying of books to soldiers and sailors held a high place. Every taste had to be catered for, every degree of education given its appropriate food. To some the Army was an elementary school, to others it almost fulfilled the functions of a university, especially after the Armistice, when ambitious educational schemes were set on foot to calm idle and chafing warriors, and when our own War Office deluged France and Germany with piles of lofty literature, very little of which, we believe, was read.

The belligerent nations learned at last that it was just as worth while to tempt a soldier to read as to teach him to shoot. The question now remains what fruit this discovery is going to bear in peace, where the problem, apparently simpler, is really harder. Soldiers at war had not the opportunity of using their leisure as they wished; they were circumscribed in place and opportunity. The free citizen is less fettered, and, being more scattered, is less amenable to propaganda. Yet for citizens at peace, no less than for soldiers at war, propaganda, tactful and patient, is necessary if they are to be induced to apply the medicine of reading to their minds. From a quite different point of view this truth is made clear by Miss Sayle's little book, which is a development of an attractive article in theNew Statesmandescribing the beginning and development of a library in a small Hampshire village. It is a book which all who have similar ambitions for their villages should read, for it will save them many natural and fatal errors, besides telling them all they need know about organisation, finance, book-buying and book-housing, in plain words with plenty of humour.

Miss Sayle very strongly insists on it that a village library must be simply and solely a circulating library, stocking the books which its members want to readand no others. More ambitious efforts may be made wherever the Public Libraries Act is applied, but a village library will almost always be supported by voluntary subscriptions, and can only afford books which pay their way. She shows how much propaganda is needed to start even such a library and to keep it going—a library from which practically every book that was not agreeable fiction had to be ruthlessly weeded. In twelve years the one visible sign of progress has been the tendency of Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick to replace Mrs. Henry Wood as the favourite. Yet she holds that it has been worth while, and we agree. A small agricultural community has been induced to own, manage, and take a pride in a library, and even the fact that "father went less often to the 'Anchor' as the result" is a solid testimony to its value. If life of villages in the future regains its old vigour without becoming entirely urban in character, enterprises of this kind will be a duty incumbent on their more enlightened members. And they will only be successful if Miss Sayle's maxims are followed. Her "dont's" are admirable, and the biggest one of all is "don't get slack." She might have added the lesson of Mr. Koch's book and of the whole war: "don't forget that any reading is better than a vacant mind."

Perhaps the most distinguishing of the pleasant Victorian characteristics was the combination of dignity with charm, and few of the artists of the period had that combination to a greater degree than Thackeray's daughter. This last volume of hers is entirely civilised and urbane in its appeal, and yet has, with its urbanity, a warmth of affection and a genuine love for and interest in others which are often lacking in the better,more highly-coloured works of contemporary art. It is a book of memories, and what Lady Ritchie remembers is not mere gossip, not what can be had by observation, but the deeper things of friendly intercourse, and the light thrown on character by circumstance and intimacy. The title-essay is mainly concerned with that remarkable woman, Julia Margaret Cameron, who was the friend of all the great men of her day, and the first woman to attempt artistic portraiture in photography. In telling of her Lady Ritchie cannot avoid a certain kindly humour; but the Victorians' laughter was not cruel, and though Mrs. Cameron must have been at times rather a burden, one can feel sure no one of her friends let her guess it. Certainly worse fates might overcome one than to be nursed by her. Mr. Cameron was ill and his wife gave him "home care and comforts." During the crisis he had "strong beef-tea thickened with arrowroot six times a day," and when he was convalescent,

The patient has poached eggs at night, gets up at eleven, has his dinner (gravy soup and curry) at one, mulligatawny soup and meat at five, a free allowance of port wine, averaging a bottle a day. Ten drops of Jereme's opiate every morning, a dose of creosote zinc and gum arabic before his meals, and a dose of quinine after each meal.

There are essays on Mrs. Sartoris and Mrs. Kemble, a brief note on a Roman Christmas, when she saw Lockhart driving with Frederic Leighton, a few slighter pieces, and then, last of all, a tale—Binnie—belonging to the Mrs. Williamson series. Not many people, one supposes, now readOld Kensingtonor "Miss Thackeray's" other novels, but there should be something of a demand for them by those who first meet her lucid, gentle narrative talent in the story ofBinnie.

The snare of descriptive writing in novels is as the snare of decorative passages in an imaginative painting; the descriptions may fail to combine, remain detached from the meaning and purpose of the novel, and finally the novelist may be tempted by his skill in such writing to indulge in it at the expense of his proper task. French novels, the worst of which have as a rule a composition too often absent from ours, rarely abound in purple passages—certainly with no French novelist of equal standing could an admirer do what Mr. Brewitt has done with Mr. Phillpotts. Here are a hundred of Mr. Phillpotts's best decorations, full of observation, sensitive at times to another beauty than the merely observed, but rarely fused by that imaginative ardour which makes some of Mr. Hardy's and Mr. Conrad's descriptive passages an essential part of the novel. Sometimes, especially in his description of violence, Mr. Phillpotts's meaning is obscure: for instance, in the account of the Flood from one book you have a simile which is of no assistance to the picture—"Yelling, like some incarnate and insane manifestation of the elements massed in one, the hurricane launched itself upon the valley." He is more successful as a rule when he catches nature in softer moods, quick with spring or flushed with summer: there is a genuine charm of fancy, if no imaginative depth, in this pastel of a sleeping forest:

The trees indeed sleep, but they also dream. In the heart of every leafless oak a dryad whispers that the days are fleeting; that the icy-footed winter hours are drawing into the snow-wreaths away in their chill processions; that the fountain of the sap will soon rise again to spring's unsealing; that swiftly will the bud-sheath swell and pale and shimmer silkily down, like a cast-off veil at the feet of the vernal beeches.

Mr. Phillpotts rarely drops into that snare of the writer of picturesque prose, the rhythm of blank verse; but his style is not always equal to the demands he makes upon it. It never has the sombre, heavy-hearted gravity of Hardy's, nor the gloomy colour and triumphant ecstasy of Ruskin's. This is indeed a photograph album rather than a book of pictures.

Mrs. Richardson, something of a new-comer to Purton, as it would appear, makes no pretensions to original research, and has contented herself so far with giving rather a guide to Purton than a history of the village, a pleasant, ample, and leisurely place in North Wilts, with a fine church and an unusually fine stone-built manor house to its name. Her explanatory sub-title, "Notes and Hearsay," prevents the expectation of anything exhaustive. The notes, though excellent as far as they go, might have been considerably extended with advantage to the book; and as to the hearsay, it must be owned that, so far, she has not heard of much—nothing, we will engage, to what she will hear if she lives in Purton long enough to be accepted by the natives. There is abundant material in every old village in England for a good and useful contribution to history, and, if Mrs. Richardson looks forward (as it is to be hoped she may) to a new edition of her little book, we would recommend to her noticeKingham Old and New, by W. Warde Fowler, which was published by Mr. Blackwell, of Oxford, in 1913, and is a model for any such work. Another which might help her isHow to Write the History of a Parish, by the Reverend John Charles Cox, of which a fifth edition was published in 1909. Her first care should be to get hold of the Enclosure Award and Tithe Commutation Map, which ought to be in the vestry. One will give her the names of the Common Fields; the other, compared with the large-scale Ordnance map and helped by local knowledge, should enable her to find them all. Then, with the Parish Registers and, with luck, some Court Rolls, she should be able to get well back in the centuries, and might then make arrangements for a prolonged stay in London and daily attendance at the Public Record Office. What she might find there, or fail to find, there's no telling. If she were fortunate she would light upon some great old Chancery or Exchequer suit—better than the one in the Star-chamber, good as that is, which concerns the adventures of the image of Saint George, and is one of her happiest discoveries—in which the pleadings would be written in pure Shakesperean prose, and the depositions of witnesses record very often theipsissima verbaof the peasantry of its time. Behind all that—since Purton belonged to Malmesbury Abbey—she would find very much more than she has found so far concerning the economy, temporal and spiritual, of her parish and manor. She should undoubtedly find Subsidy Rolls which would record the names and status of the villagers back to the day of the Poll Tax. Some of the early Court Rolls may be there, and possibly also a Survey or Extent, which would give her the services and "boon-works" due from the bondsmen to their lords. There is no limit to be set to what diligence, and help from Mrs. Story-Maskelyne (whose chapter on Braden Forest and the parish boundaries is the best in the book), may recover from the Mausoleum in Fetter Lane. To that adventure we heartily commend Mrs. Richardson, that of a good book she may make a better.

Miss Dempster, who died in 1913, was authoress in her day of certain novels, of which one, calledVera, was translated into Russian, and another,Blue Roses, was to be found on every bookstall in America. It met, she tells us here, with the favour of the late Duke of Albany. "Ah," said his Royal Highness, "thatis a wonderful book! But whydidyou make it so sad? Please to make your next one end well." "The next one will be all right, sir. It is a Scotch story, and it does end well." That was at Cannes, whereMiss Dempster lived and moved in a society of exiled kings, Russian grand dukes, princes, statesmen, high ladies and clergymen. The manners of such folk are without doubt as worthy of record as those of any other people whomsoever; but Miss Dempster, in the letters to an unnamed uncle, of which her book chiefly consists, contents herself for the most part with recording their names, entrances and exits upon the scene of the Riviera. We are irresistibly reminded of Captain Sumph inPendennis.

"I remember poor Byron, Hobhouse, Trelawny, and myself dining with Cardinal Mezzocado at Rome," Captain Sumph began, "and we had some Orvieto wine for dinner, which Byron liked very much. And I remember how the Cardinal regretted that he was a single man. We went to Aix-la-Vecchia two days afterwards, where Byron's yacht was—and, by Jove, the Cardinal died within three weeks; and Byron was very sorry, for he rather liked him."

Incidentally, one may call attention to the letterpress. On page 148 a lady is referred to in a note as "a grandchild of Mr. Nassau, senior, now married to Mr. St. Loe Strachey." It is not, we believe, even true of that particular grandchild of Nassau senior's. We read of "the greatcoups de logis" of a castle in Normandy, of "thecausus belliof the Franco-Prussian War." On page 213 we have an epitaph which is worth preservation:

LIC JACITCASPARUS HAÜSERÆNIGMAPIÙ LEMPORISIGNOTO NATIVITASOCCULTA MORS1883.

Sic, orlic, at any ratejacit, or lies, the record of the unfortunate Caspar in this work.

Recently an important transaction was nearly stopped because one of the parties saw on an official document what he took to be the initials of a particular person. The letters were, however, only an indication where the seal should be affixed. Dr. Poole'sSeals and Documents, an offprint from theTransactions of the British Academy, deals with earlier days, and may induce similar ignorance. It is but twenty odd pages long, but full of matter which the judicious reader will value as from a master of diplomatic. It summarises much learning, and suggests, by the way, several inquiries,e.g., as to the displacement of papyrus by parchment; the period at which a seal to close a secret letter—like our modern sealing-wax—went out of fashion; and the use of the diminutivesigilluminstead of the classicalsignumfor seal. Dr. Poole shows how easy it was for a seal to be lost, and mentions that a unique document in the Bodleian has been "irreparably mutilated" under the direction of the late Librarian. When parchment was used, thin pieces of the actual material could be stripped from it to tie it up with a seal affixed. It is odd that this simple practice has not been carried further back. Much of interest is given concerning the Papal bull, abullaof lead used in warm countries where wax would not retain its distinctness. Bulls employed by the universal "Papa" remind us of the classical "bulla" worn by boys. The most ancient in existence is that of Pope Deusdedit (615-8). In England the bull is earlier than the wax seal, but the double-pendent seal which led to the Great Seal is an English invention. The whole subject is confused by the existence of forgeries, which need erudition like Dr. Poole's to dismiss.

Jesus College, Cambridge, has a unique beginning, as it grew out of a Benedictine Nunnery, and Bishop Alcock, of Ely, its founder, when he did away with the discredited sisterhood, adapted their ruined buildings instead of destroying them. The college was erected to the honour of the Blessed Virgin, St. John, and St. Radegund, but Alcock added the new title which it still bears. The names of Prioresses are preserved from Letitia,circa1213, to Joan Fulbourne, 1493. Though we do not know precisely when the nuns began, there is an unusual amount of records left concerning them which tend to show that they were distinguished in family rather than learning, and given to hospitality as well as good works. They owed their butcher £21 at a time when a sheep cost a shilling. Let us hope that the good man's daughters learnt something as boarders in the St. Radegund Guest House. What can be gathered concerning early days is told pleasantly. It may seem odd that a nunnery should exist in Cambridge, quite near the site of the famous Sturbridge Fair; but the ladies started before the colleges began, and they were some way off the nucleus of academic buildings. The excellent sketches are a great addition to the book. The beautiful piscina figured on page 286 has long been familiar to lovers of Cambridge architecture, but new discoveries have been made since Le Keux published hisMemorialsin 1845. Jesus has been lucky in its antiquaries and historians, also in escaping the full fervour of that debased Gothic which flourished in the nineteenth century. The discovery of the Chapter Arches by the Rev. Osmond Fisher in 1893 is quite a romance. He was able to supplement many years earlier the indolence of a Master and save the Tower from falling.

The notes, other than architectural, chronicle the varying fortunes of the foundation, with details of the plague, plays in English and Latin, militant and destructive commissioners, and worthies like Tobias Rustat, Yeoman of the Robes to Charles II. Cranmer's is the first name in the college lists, and it has always been distinguished in theology, though for most people its main modern reputation is for athletics. This side of the college is, however, not touched by the authors, who deal with reverend signiors and men famous in literature.

The college can boast of Sterne, whose grandfather was one of its masters; but nothing is known of his academic behaviour. This is just as well, since his associate Hall-Stevenson can hardly have been a model young man. Coleridge, the only poet, we think, who ever won an academic prize for a Greek Ode, was decidedly eccentric, and had a reputation for saying good things, as we learn from the lively pages of Gunning. He was treated with great leniency by the dons of Jesus, and left through his own perversity. His poetry at this time is negligible, and his lines "to a young Jackass on Jesus Piece," whom he wished to take with him,

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