BRIEFER MENTION
805
Satire in the Victorian Novel, by Frances Theresa Russell (8vo, 335 pages; Macmillan), is as little satirical as it is possible for a monograph to be. The author examines with scholarly patience the great body of Literature which includes Butler as well as Dickens, and Trollope as well as Meredith. She goes so far as to chart humour, satire, and criticism; representing the first and last as circles which overlap, and satire as the overlapping. She concludes that "we have as yet invented nothing to surpass the general Victorian satiric philosophy,—that the wisest reaction to life is a high seriousness graced with humor. . . ."" This may well be true. But the reader becomes increasingly anxious to reach a point in the book where the author will step into the magic region of overlapped circles, and increasingly impatient of a high seriousness which has an odd ring in what is, after all, the twentieth century.
Old Junk, by H. M. Tomlinson (12mo, 208 pages; Knopf), is a book of sketches, "stories of travel and chance," full of "the indubitable sense of the harmonies of imaginative prose.” The quotation is from S. K. Ratcliffe, who writes an enthusiastic and justifiable foreword. A book of almost magical delight to those who care for beauty in writing and of enchantment for those who love the flights of the exploring mind. It is the sort of book a master of prose would be glad to have written in his apprentice years. Few of our arrived writers have ever tried anything so difficult or succeeded so well in their trials.
Many Many Moons, by Lew Sarett (12mo, 82 pages; Holt), is an attempt to reproduce in poetry "the loam and the lingo, the sand and the syllables of North America." More specifically it is a reproduction of Indian tribal chants, a task for which Mr. Sarett was eminently fitted. His predecessors were either anthropologists with little poetic ability, or poets with no authentic knowledge of the Indian. He has combined the merits of both.
Diana or the Ephesians, by Mrs. Desmond Humphreys (12mo, 492 pages; Stokes), cuts loose from the usual formulas of fiction and attempts an ambitious study in feminine egotism, an uneven performance but one which reveals decided vigour.
