BRIEFER MENTION
581
Friday Nights, by Edward Garnett (12mo, 377 pages; Knopf: $2.50). Mr Garnett is a man who has long displayed a gift for perceiving, in advance of his fellows, literary clouds no larger than a man’s hand. From his position as publisher's reader he has enjoyed a wide view of the horizon, and it is history that his eye was the first to spy Conrad, Hudson, and numerous others. But this collection of appreciations, containing papers bearing widely separated dates, proves that his intuition is not matched by critical analysis. He is keenly aware in the presence of genius or talent, his depths are stirred, but he cannot quite communicate the causes of his condition. His emotional justifications consist too often of a fine mélange of the genres, in which the terms of literary art are translated into the terms of every other art without Mr Garnett troubling to discover their meaning in the dictionary of any one language. The sympathetic reactions here presented are not now valuable as criticism—more thoroughly analytical intelligences have worked the mines that are Mr Garnett's discoveries—but they do tell us what, for example, their writer felt about Joseph Conrad in 1898. The sentiments do Mr Garnett credit, but they contribute nothing to our understanding of Conrad. Where are Mr Garnett's anecdotes? They should prove valuable.
William de Morgan and his Wife, by A. M. W. Stirling (8vo, 403 pages; Holt: $6). Mrs Stirling displays an admirable talent for research, together with an almost unrelieved ineptitude as biographer. The result of her labour is a book which has charm in spite of the complete absence of tact in the arrangement of the material. The charm of the work radiates from the rare personalities of William and Evelyn De Morgan, which will not be submerged in the mass of letters and anecdotes with which the book is salted. This volume is in reality the authoritative De Morgan source-book. Any one of a dozen competent hands could turn out a first-rate biography of the novelist and his wife using as a basis only the materials which Mrs Stirling has furnished here in such profusion.
The Sporting Life and Other Trifles, by Robert Lynd (12mo, 241 pages; Scribner: $2.25) eludes most of the labels in the light essay catalogue. Mr Lynd's humour is too robust to be whimsical, and not quite disciplined enough to be ironic; it lodges gracefully in a niche between Milne on that side of the water and Clarence Day, jr., on this. Aside from the cricket chapters, which are merely excellent reporting, the range of subjects is from money-lenders to milk, from boxing to a small boy's appetite. The collection is gay, observant, happily expressed—in the truest sense the reflection of a keen intelligence.
Guilty Souls, by Robert Nichols (12mo, 181 pages; Harcourt, Brace: $1.75). The author of this play gives the effect of attempting to carry a greater weight than his shoulders will support; of endeavouring to follow psychologically in the footsteps of a Dostoevsky without being possessed either of Dostoevsky's wealth of insight or rich knowledge of human nature. Though there are occasional scintillating passages, the play tends to be sluggish of movement and is too poorly motivated to be dramatically effective.
