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record of holiday travels through the Central American Republics; but the author of "The Western Avernus has, of course, the experienced traveller's knack of penetrating for some distance beneath the surface, even when he travels with an ease unknown to him in earlier days. He is tolerant but not ignorant of defects in the people he observes, and this informed sympathy gives to his book a value not always to be found in far more ambitious works by less seasoned wanderers in distant lands.

LETTERS FROM W. H. HUDSON TO EDWARD GARNETT. J. M. Dent & Sons, Ltd. 6s. net.

First published in a limited edition in 1923, these letters are now available to the general reader. Hudson was a good letter-writer, although he always spoke of himself as a bad one. Nearly all these letters are vigorous expressions of his opinions, his aims, or his prejudices. In a preface to this edition Mr. Garnett draws attention. to reviews of the limited edition which he considers to have been unsound, and it gives him an opportunity to emphasise certain sides of his friend's character, such as his "waywardness of spirit," whose charm he thinks to have been ignored by these reviewers. Most readers will agree that it is futile to attempt to "place " Hudson in the hierarchy of letters. It is enough that he interpreted certain sides of Nature, such as birds and children, with a sure and delicate touch, and that in "Green Mansions " he wrote a romance fresh with the spirit of youth. By these things he will live, and his letters will be of abiding interest for the sake of his work.

DEAD RECKONINGS IN FICTION. By Dorothy Brewster and Angus Burrell, Columbia University, New York. With a Foreword by James Harvey Robinson. Longmans, Green. 9s. net.

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The reviewer of this book is disarmed by the confession of the authors: Our position is distressingly simple. We like certain novels and stories, and wish to talk about them; and we are halted at the threshold by wondering why we like them, and why anyone should care to listen to our talk about them." Again, they say " Dead reckoning is not the best way to navigate. But it is the only way left when the day is dark and the stars are obliterated or the horizon is blurred." The reader, sailing with them, may perhaps be allowed to complain that the voyage is long and "The Brothers Karamazof " tiring shipmates for two whole chapters. He may also wonder why Conrad's "Marlow" is thrown overboard so ruthlessly, with the remark: "We can gladly enough dispense with him. For much of the time Marlow is de trop." Apart from these complaints, the reader will find much acute observation in the book, some psycho-analysis of modern novelists, and a pleasantly humorous attitude in the authors.

DEEP SEA CHANTIES; OLD SEA SONGS. Edited by Frank Shay. Decorations and Woodcuts by Edward A. Wilson. Introduction by William McFee. William Heinemann, Ltd.

15s. net.

If sailors' chanties were to survive the age of steam and motor power it was necessary for them to be recorded in print, and if they were to be confined between covers, it could not have been done better than in this volume, where they are accompanied by Mr. Wilson's spirited woodcuts and marginal decorations to give them something of the atmosphere of the sailing ships in which they were born.

The reader is bound to regret the passing of sail as one of the last survivals of ages of adventure on the surface of the earth (for the future adventurers will presumably be men of the air), and the same perhaps sentimental regret will come as he turns these pages of chanties neatly labelled, pruned of extemporary verses (mostly unprintable) and confined in type. The rolling lilts of " Away Rio," "The Banks of the Sacramento," and " Blow the Man Down "cry out for a roaring chorus, and the four innocent printed verses of "Whisky for My Johnny bring unregenerate memories of the vivid extemporary verses of wartime "folk-songs" amongst old sailor-men, with a feeling that in this case the meal has been served without salt. These objections would hold against any collection in print, and we can only repeat that this collection or its format is unlikely to be improved, except by the inclusion of some indication of the tunes.

THE BEARDSLEY PERIOD: An Essay in Perspective.

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By

Osbert Burdett. John Lane, The Bodley Head, Ltd. 7s. 6d. net. In this essay Mr. Burdett has given to his readers a clearer statement of the true place of " the 'Nineties "in the history of literature and art than has previously appeared in print. As a member of that company, looking back after an interval of a quarter of a century, he is able to review the achievement of Beardsley and his friends from a standpoint at once sympathetic and detached. In a penetrating chapter on "The Aesthetic Type " he shows the æsthetes in revolt against industrialism which was creating ugliness everywhere, but themselves incapable of creative effort: These men fall between the two worlds of art and industry." These were the followers of the movement; but to some of the leaders, and particularly to Beardsley, Mr. Burdett would give a higher place.

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Beardsley he regards as a supreme illustrator, "whose drawing begins at the point where the text stops. The words pause, but the drawing goes on to evoke a new world of imagination beyond them."

Equally illuminating is Mr. Burdett when discussing Oscar Wilde as a "Man of Legend," dependent for a large part of his reputation on the accessories of much advertisement; but with a gift for prose and for witty conversation which might have earned him a slender reputation in letters on their own merits.

For once the sub-title of a book justly sums it up. This is an admirable "Essay in Perspective."

LORD JOHN MANNERS AND HIS FRIENDS.
Whibley. In 2 Volumes. With Illustrations.
Blackwood & Sons.

30s. net.

By Charles
William

IN reviewing the middle years of last century, the political warfare over the Corn Laws and the faction fights over the leadership of the Tory party, Mr. Charles Whibley has opened up ground which has received too little attention from political historians. He has drawn much of his material from documents in the possession of the present Duke of Rutland at Belvoir Castle, and he has found in the person of Lord John Manners a representative of the best traditions of the Conservative aristocracy. In those days" the ruling families" of England really ruled, and it says much for the wide vision of Lord John Manners that he was able to appreciate and loyally to support the brilliant Jewish adventurer, Disraeli, against the prejudices of other aristocratic members of his party.

Particularly opportune at the present-day are the discussions on Protection versus Free Trade of that period, and the position taken up by Lord John Manners on the "Irish Question. Above all the character of the central figure in the book is of abiding interest. This Tory idealist, with a genius for friendship and no thought of personal aggrandisement in his political work, became the seventh Duke of Rutland. Of the latter part of his life Mr. Whibley writes: "He himself was in all things a Grand Seigneur. He practised in his age the chivalry whose doctrines he had preached in youth." He had been associated with Lord Shaftesbury in his work for the poor, and he upheld the feudal ideal against "the grasping democracy which construes benefits for rights.' Even a Socialist might well benefit from a perusal of Mr. Whibley's pages.

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LADY ANNE BARNARD AT THE CAPE OF GOOD HOPE, 1797-1802. By Dorothea Fairbridge. Illustrated by a series

of Sketches made by Lady Anne Barnard. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 30s. net.

Lady Anne Lindsay, for some years one of the most popular young women in London society by reason as much of her wit as of her beauty, finally surprised her admirers by marrying a young man much her junior and with comparatively poor prospects. Andrew Barnard was appointed Colonial Secretary in the newly-conquered Cape Colony, and Lady Anne accompanied him there shortly after their marriage. It was a great change for a brilliant woman, who had numbered amongst her friends the Prince of Wales, Burke, Pitt, William Windham, and Henry Dundas, to be removed to a remote dependency; but her shrewd commonsense, coupled with the early training at Balcarres (so strict that on one occasion Lady Anne and her small brothers and sisters had all run away, carrying with them the baby!) well fitted her to find interest and entertainment wherever she went. The results of her

observation of people and manners found expression in her diary and sketch-book, and form the basis for this volume.

It is a lively narrative, as Miss Fairbridge relates it, and Lady Anne's sketches are always to the point.

CHARLES DICKENS AND OTHER VICTORIANS. By Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch. Cambridge University Press. 10s. 6d.net. The urbanity of letters is the distinguishing mark of " Q.'s " lectures at Cambridge of which (with the exception of a paper on Trollope) these are the printed form. He is for ever reiterating this plea : " What I plead is that all we engaged in literature take some warning from the discourtesies of the past, and that you, at any rate, who pass out into literary practice from this Tripos of ours, shall pass out as a confraternity of gentlemen." It is a fair and pleasant aim in these days of literary "muck-raking," and it seems to the present reader that Sir Arthur's criticism does not suffer from the fact that it avoids acerbity. Indeed, he excels as an interpreter of the fine shades of literature and few could hear or read his lectures without gaining a more just appreciation of the great figures in English letters. In this latest printed collection his touch is as sure and yet urbane as before. He deals with Dickens, Thackeray, Disraeli, Mrs. Gaskell, the Barsetshire Novels of Trollope, and "The Victorian Background.”

W. ROWNTREE.

No. 493 will be published in July, 1925.

INDEX

TO

VOLUME 241

January, 1925-April, 1925

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