Onze Stam. Jaargang 1909

New English Books.

Some of the new novels.

Among the historical novels of the month two are especially interesting. The Slave Girl of Agra, by Romesh Dutt (Fisher Unwin, 6s.), shows how useful is fiction as the handmaid of fact, for Mr. Dutt puts vividly before us that wonderful period of the history of India when Akbar was Emperor.

Great things may be expected from so good a beginning as this first novel, Olive in Italy, by Moray Dalton (Fisher Unwin, 6s.). In it an English girl, left an orphan and penniless, accepts the invitation of some Italian cousins who are of the middle-class, but not at all nice.

In Gervase, by Mabel Dearmer (Macmillan, 6s.), the character drawing is good and the theme is marriage and what it has always meant to mystics. Gervase, the child of a hunting squire and a delicate intellectual woman, was orphaned young and educated by a tutor who was somewhat of an ascetic.

The Captain's Daughter, by Helen H. Watson (Mills and

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Boon, 6s.), deals with two main characters who are carefully sketched, and not impropable in the main.

The Love Tale of a Misanthrope is by Ethel M. Forbes (Elliot Stock. 6 sh.). ‘There is no logic in love,’ the misanthrope learned by experience, and neither is Miss Forbes's book logical, but it possesses much of the charm of ‘Little Lord Fauntleroy.’

The White Sister, by Marion Crawford (Macmillan. 6s.). Reading this, his last book, is almost as if one were reading the last letters of a friend.

Barbary Sheep, by Robert Hichens (Methuen. 3s. 6d.). The witchery of the desert is again Mr. Hichens theme, but exquisite is his description.

Some volumes of minor verse.

Mr. Cecil made a hit with his ‘Historical Tragedy of Nero’.

His new book, The Poet and his Soul (Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co.) shows no symptom of retrogression in either the spirit or the structure of his art. It recalls the famous dialogues between Socrates and Diotima in its mode of attack on the great problems which are its theme, and is, perhaps purposely, cast in a similar form.

The Dawn, and other Poems (Arthur H. Stockwell, Ludgate Hill) is another volume in which a high degree of promise is not unaccompanied by performance. But why such a choice of hero? Young men who seek inspiration in the brandybottle are not very interesting with their religious doubts and socialistic dreams. But the shorter poems are full of fervour, and are not seldom delicately wrought and finely conceived.

W.S.