words of Shakespeare. The adaptations the author has made, presumably for greater dramatic effect, are curious. Pilate expressly condemns Jesus, for example; in his scene with his wife Procula he is far more the curt, hard-minded servant of Cæsar even than he was in the similar passage in Good Friday. Annas and Caiaphas are represented as the embodiment of impartiality; Herod might be an amiable sceptic out of Anatole France; and even Judas is rehabilitated, a betrayer but a penitent. Admittedly Mr. Masefield had superhuman difficulties to surmount in modernising the central tragedy of Christendom for presentment on any small stage, and even his mistakes are interesting. It is only just to add that the play contains a couple of lyrics of surpassing beauty.

A Poetry Recital, by James Stephens (Macmillan).-Nearly everything that Mr. James Stephens writes, whether it be in prose or in verse, is worthy of consideration; and there was a time when it looked as though he was destined to rank among the three or four most considerable poets of his generation. The crude violence and juvenile insolence of his earliest work would, one hoped, mellow into real power, and, coming from Dublin, it was a refreshing change from the rather anæmic plaintiveness and mysticism of the disciples of Mr. Yeats and A. E. But it cannot be said that this early promise has been altogether fulfilled. The impatience of Insurrections softened into the charm-a very genuine charm-of Songs from the Clay; and in his few later volumes he has not struck any new note of significance. That he writes but little poetry is nothing against him: so many poets write far too much. But his tendency to repeat himself, instead of conquering fresh fields, is to be deplored. Some of the poems in his new book, which is a very slender one, have already appeared in earlier volumes, while others are but old songs re-sung. Nevertheless, there are half a dozen pieces, notably the delicately-drawn portraits, "Nancy Walsh" and "Peggy Mitchell," which give the collection value; and if Mr. Stephens is inclined to be carried away by the singing quality of words, to the detriment of his attention to their sense, there is usually grace in his metrical arrangements. He has so much fancy, so much wit, and so much skill, that all that is needed, to stultify our disappointment in him, is that he should use them to the full extent of his undoubted ability.

FICTION.

Christina Alberta's Father, by H. G. Wells (Jonathan Cape).-Mr. Wells the humorist, Mr. Wells the prophet, Mr. Wells the sociologist, Mr. Wells the historian, and Mr. Wells the teller of tales, have here collaborated in one of the most attractive works ever issued above their joint signature. Its hero is Mr. Albert Edward Preemby, a retired laundryman and a widower. Like Kipps and Mr. Polly, he is essentially something better than fate has allowed him to be; he shares their thwarted faculty for selfexpression, he has the same questing intelligence, and limited opportunities have made it produce the same alert but muddled mind. In due course he is married to Chris Hossett-and her laundry. Christina Alberta's arrival follows, and the way in which the reader is allowed to learn what

remains hidden from Mr. Preemby, the fact that she is not his daughter, is an artistic triumph. When his wife's death in 1920 releases Mr. Preemby from the uncongenial laundry, he ultimately removes himself and his queer concernment with Atlantis, the Pyramids, the Lost Tribes, and reincarnation to a boarding-house in Tunbridge Wells, and an undergraduate's prank at a spiritualistic séance reveals to Mr. Preemby that he is a reincarnation of none other than the mighty ruler Sargon, King of Kings, come back to be Lord of the World. He becomes more than a little deranged, and when the boarding-house grows uneasy, he returns to London, pays a flying visit to his former quarters (his daughter's choice) among the ineffectuals of Chelsea, and goes forth to declare himself, rally about him his rejoicing subjects, and set the world to rights. But first he wishes for a time of withdrawal and self-communing. He learns something of the sad realities of London before he finds a hermitage and the consoling heartiness and attentiveness of Bobby Roothing, a young "journalist of sorts." Then comes the tragi-comedy of his calling of the disciples, his enrolment of them in the streets, and his march with a motley following to the celebrated Rubicon Restaurant in Holborn, where they may sit at meat while he addresses them; and so Preemby-Sargon comes into the hands of the authorities, feels the ordered repulsiveness of a workhouse infirmary, and is sent to an asylum. Bobby rescues him, and the Dr. Devizes who tends him and teaches him that all greatness from the past is indeed in his veins and the veins of us all, and brings him back to sanity, is a great friend of Christina's and comes to know her for his daughter. Whether the parable of the illumination that came upon Mr. Preemby is accepted or ignored, his story is vivid, moving-at times harrowing and in many respects noble. And Mr. Well's sense of character and gift of telling phrase have not been exerted in so masterly a manner for years.

Those Barren Leaves, by Aldous Huxley (Chatto & Windus).---Mr. Huxley's is a dizzying book. The guileless reader in search of an intelligible story would soon retire bewildered, but that is rather the fault of Mr. Huxley's presentation than of his theme. Part I., "An Evening at Mrs. Aldwinkle's," suggests a symposium among the guests in that reluctantly ageing lion-hunter's Italian castle. We meet Miss Thriplow, the novelist, tirelessly posing even to herself; Cardan, the witty, sensual, elderly parasite; a new arrival, the seductive Calamy, a sportsman and man of the world, weary of most sensations; Mr. Falk, the reverend Labour leader, with his disciple, the shy, earnest, young Lord Hovenden; and Mrs. Aldwinkle's lovable niece Irene. Between Hovenden and Irene are developing the only natural and simple relations in the group. From this scene we are suddenly switched over to solitude and the first person in Part II., “Fragments from the Autobiography of Francis Chelifer." For a while we float upon his thought-stream, even as he lies floating on the warm Tyrrhenian sea, recalling the office in which he edits the Rabbit Fanciers' Gazette, his boarding-house, his old home at Oxford, his poems, his love affair, until a sailing boat runs him down and he returns to consciousness as the prey of Mrs. Aldwinkle. In Part III., The Loves of

66

the Parallels," he is one of the party at the castle, pursued by his hostess, and dogged in her interests by her niece, much to the perturbation of Lord Hovenden. Calamy has been unable to suppress his habitual responses in the society of Miss Thriplow. Cardan sees what he wants, a guarantee against a proximate old age of penury and loneliness, and very nearly secures it by marriage with a wealthy but imbecile English girl, Grace Elver. In Part IV., "The Journey," the party are on the road to Rome by car. Irene and Hovenden have reason for their unsophisticated happiness, but Mrs. Aldwinkle's direct appeal to Chelifer is interrupted by the commotion caused by the sudden illness of Grace Elver, whose death upsets Cardan's agreeable scheme. Some high philosophising by Calamy, rather unreal in the circumstances given, opens Part V., " Conclusions"; he acts upon it so far as to go up alone into the mountains, leaving Miss Thriplow to enjoy a luxurious if momentary lapse into mysticism. Calamy will, at all events, try the life contemplative, he tells Cardan and Chelifer when they seek him out. If he finds it is not his path he will come back to practical life. Chelifer will go back to rabbits and reality. Mrs. Aldwinkle will console herself at Monte Carlo, nor will the sapient, the contemptible Cardan be missing from her train. Mr. Huxley's book is full of wit and of an erudition that loves to display itself in a comic mask and in the oddest collocations, and there are many descriptive passages of undeniable impressiveness and beauty.

Cat's Cradle, by Maurice Baring (Heinemann).-Mr. Baring's new essay in recapturing the past naturally suggests the work of Marcel Proust in more than its mere dimensions. None the less, it is not a static, introspective work; the external details of a period of nearly seventy years are rendered with affectionate care and fidelity; and a whole era of the history of fashionable and diplomatic society once more impresses the reader with its prestige, its security, and the loftiness of certain of its standards. It is the story of a woman, almost a femme fatale, Blanche Clifford, who, in her girlhood, is sent by her selfish father to Rome to recover from an attachment to a penniless subaltern of which he does not approve. She meets and fascinates an Italian prince, Guido Roccapalumba, and is persuaded to marry him. The result is unrelieved unhappiness. Her life is poisoned by the jealousy and suspicion of her husband, who is completely dominated by the odious Princess Julia, his mother, quite the most striking personage in the novel. Between the two Blanche becomes practically a prisoner, and at last she resolves to leave her husband. On the eve of her elopement, however, Guido is struck down by a form of paralysis and is bedridden for eleven years. Blanche's sense of duty makes her remain with him all this time. Whether his illness is genuine or simulated, he is able finally to surprise her with a man fifteen years her junior, Bernard Lacy, and though their relations are innocent he gets a separation. Blanche returns to England and thereafter lives with her uncle and her motherless cousin, Rose Mary, a callous lovely girl destined to be her antagonist. Blanche is freed by the sudden death of Guido, and she feels she is entitled to compensate herself for much unmerited suffering. Accordingly, when the fatuous Bernard consults her about his

contemplated advances to Rose Mary, she wilfully misinterprets his intentions, and herself becomes Lady Lacy. Rose Mary marries Bernard's best friend. The situation is fraught with certain mischief, and it comes about all the more surely because Blanche's own character cannot indefinitely support the strain of her experiences. Her story is the framework of an astonishing reconstruction of two generations of high society in England, Italy, and elsewhere. Mr. Baring takes his leisure on his way among the gracious scenes and figures of vanished days, and dwells upon every detail of his picture, "not as one who remembers, but rather as one who

My Head! My Head! by Robert Graves (Martin Secker).-The author tells us that he began to write this story because he wanted to face two Biblical problems which had long puzzled him: the exact relations between Elisha and the Shunamite woman, and the sequence of events that made necessary the death of Moses on Mount Nebo, and what form his death took. He dovetails his solutions by making the Shunamite ask Elisha, when he first visits her, to tell her the true history of Moses; she is not contented, as it were, with the official version. Speaking rather as the mouthpiece of the theories of Mr. Graves, Elisha gives a vigorous portrayal of Moses as the leader of the Jewish people and the seer to whom they owed their conception of a tribal deity. The story of the plagues is duly rationalised, and it is suggested that miracles are the effect of a mysterious power in men able to undergo the strain of using their stored-up psychic energy. When this section is concluded, the drama of the personal relationships of the prophet and the woman begins. She is the childless wife of an impotent husband, but Elisha prophesies that she shall bear a child, and himself makes the fulfilment of this prophecy a probability. It is therefore, his own son whom he restores to life seven years later. This free handling of the Old Testament narrative is not likely to commend itself to the orthodox, but Mr. Graves has obviously been moved by impulses far other than puerile irreverence, and his treatment of a difficult theme is at once dignified, restrained, dramatic, and humorous.

Day of Atonement, by Louis Golding (Chatto & Windus), opens with a flamboyant prologue in Sicily, where a wanderer among the Greek ruins by the sea encounters a goatherd who exchanges with him the greeting that passes between Jew and Jew on that penitential day. The goatherd is Reuben, the son of Eli and his wife Leah, and it is the tragic history of his father and mother related to his new acquaintance that forms this novel. It begins in the Jewish village of Kravno, by the Dnieper, where Eli, the young and earnest student of the Kabbala and the Talmud, and Leah Golda, the grocer's daughter, even more zealous for the ancient faith, live and love tranquilly amid the enmity that surrounds their race. Driven from Russia by a pogrom, the two come to Doomington in England, where Eli has to sacrifice his studies to the necessity of earning a meagre living, and turns carpenter. The crisis in their fates arises from the work of a Christian mission in the poor quarter they inhabit. Eli, whose study of the Scriptures has always been essentially a seeking after salvation, comes under its influence, and it is he of all men who embraces

Christianity, and even devotes his whole being to the conversion of his fellow Jews. Persecution and hatred are naturally the lot of such an apostate. In spite of her love for her husband, Leah can only see in him the insane ally of those who led the pogroms, and her rage and suffering are terrible. Reuben, growing up amid the misery that insensate bigotry has brought to pass, yet deeply attached to both his parents, comes to view both faiths with loathing. The climax is sensational in the extreme, dangerously on the verge of melodrama. On the Day of Atonement, Eli makes his way into the synagogue at Doomington, bearing a cross, bids a passionate defiance to all his persecutors there assembled, reviles their belief, and violates the Holy Ark itself. It is the hand of Leah that avenges this desecration with her husband's blood. An epilogue takes us back to their son, now the pagan Sicilian goatherd, self-exiled from his race, emancipated from the creeds, rejoicing in the beauty of the earth and sea. Mr. Golding has the courage to confront big issues and create situations that would test the finest literary gifts. When he has the leisure to be self-conscious he writes with irritating artificiality, but when he is at grips with the real difficulties of his art he displays a sincerity and dramatic force that justify the highest expectations.

66

St. Mawr, by D. H. Lawrence (Martin Secker), contains two stories, the one that gives the volume its title and the relatively brief "The Princess." The principal characters of the former are an Australian artist baronet, Sir Henry Carrington, known as Rico; his American wife, Lou; her mother, Mrs. Witt; two eerie grooms, Phoenix, a Navajo half-breed, and Lewis, a Welshman; and St. Mawr, a magnificent chestnut stallion. All these personages, including the horse, suffer from peculiar sex-complexes. The relations of Lou and Rico have gradually become platonic, a source of uneasiness and chagrin to them both." Mrs. Witt is "organically angry,' a description that also applies to the remainder of the company. She looks with loathing and contempt on most things-particularly the London social scene and the only quality that seems to appeal to her is a primitive masculinity. This even attracts her to her grooms, who have, however, neuroses of their own. Mrs. Witt is quite reasonably disliked by her agreeable, if futile, son-in-law. Lou is at odds with life, but she encounters by chance something that moves her to tears almost at once and soon inspires her to worship: it is the heroic horse, St. Mawr, overwhelming to her in his bodily beauty and in the contrast his nobility presents to all the triviality about her. He has already killed two men when she buys him, but this does not deter her from forcing her husband to ride him, even after terrifying displays in Rotten Row. Eventually Rico is disabled for life by St. Mawr, and the two women with the grooms and the horse go to New Mexico, where Lou decides that what she has sought, what has sought her, is a spirit-" something big, bigger than men, bigger than people, bigger than religion. It's something to do with wild America." The second story," The Princess," is a variation, in terms of Mr. Lawrence, on the familiar theme of the sophisticated woman, the primitive male, and the night in the lonely cabin. Dollie Urquhart received her title from her cranky Scottish father, who claimed Royal blood. She kept