Canavan"
(Heineman. 1s. 64 'There' are exceptions to the Jweneral rule that the master of the novel does not succeed with the short story, and that—_ the Jarcatest exponents of the short Story rarely produce masterpiece when they attempt the novel. The father of the modern short story, Edgar Allan Poe, never attempted 'a novel; and the short stories of the great modern novelists, Scott, Dickens, Balzac, could be lost with: four compelling us to revise our estimates of their genius.
American, Hawthorne; two Russians, Turgenev and Tolstoy, can claim supremacy in both folds. Some of us would plead for Mau-sant as a novelist, but it is writer of contes he is remembered; jand Mr. Kipling has only once attempted the novel in a book which no admirer would put near the best of his short stories. It fis, however, to English authors of modern times that we must go if patibility between similar arts. Thomas Hardy, Joseph Conrad, Henry James, H.
is—all these have gained high distinction in the short story, though one thinks of them pri:
novelists. And there is Galsworthy, who has just cal lected all of his work in that manner in this volume of nearly a thousand pages—a volume, by the }way, miraculously cheap, but print-jed on paper of not quite sufficient Can Mr. Galsworthy's short stories be reckoned as anywhere} near his great novels? The first thing which strikes us on re-reading, {these tales is that Mr. Galsworthy's jeraft is much less certain in this form. He has pat his name to novels which we do not consider his early, unreprint-_ in acknowledged novel "Jocelyn," the discreet discerned a master [the novel; but there are many short stories in this volume which are jingenuously simple, have nothing to them besides the author's characteristic outlook on life and delicate ease in the writing. There fare, too, mere sketches. things seen or heard or invented, anecdotes which only" a crisper method telling could save from vapidity. Not a master, then—and yet! "The! sti"
"The Apple. Tree; "Blackmail, "The First and. the Last," "A' Knight"—all of them, jand "the early "Man of. Devon, show real asin fs Me, method jon. to be govern of touch, @ freshness lof observation which surely belong to a master. It is a pity, perhaps, that Mr. Galsworthy allowed himself to be persuaded to reprint quite so much ag'he has done in this book. Many of the stories during the war-period and after are hardly worthy of this definitive colleetjing; and their presence rather detracts from the firm courage and serene beauty of the best work in ithe volume. It is true one of the best tales in the book—a story whose fall significance has, we feel, escaped even the author—"Late 299"—is one of the most recent; Jand it makes the early ones printed before and after it seem very thin, uunpersuasive stut. In it, as in those whose titles we have quoted Mr. Galsworthy's ideas are as ident, his prejudices as potent, as in the others; but in the best work there are, to0, vivid, suffering men Jand women, people ' whose reality. and conflict with life make these pages ay quick with sensitive sympathy and anger as the pages Jof "The Country House," "The Patrician," or "The Forsyte Saga.—The "Observer."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.