Smate Tark at WeReyLanD. Second Series. By Cecil Tarr. (Cambridge University Press. 93. net.)
The late Mr. George Russel} al-3 used to give himself the credit of being a good listener; he begun early, and many of his best anecdotes were due to the diligence with which, as @ small boy, he drew' elderly relatives. Too many young men and women desire to hear nothing but their own voices; but it will be a very vain and a very stupid youth who will not pause for half-an-hour and pay attention to Mr. Tarr. In his Devonshire home near Lustleigh, Mr. Tarr has listened, and he gives us here his gleanings of things heard by himself, things heard by the father and grandfather, and from them he makes a picture, clear and mellow as an English water-colour painting, of that rural England which has been threatened so often, and is still sound and in good heart. As one turns over these pages the very form of the moors, the sturdy sense of the farmers, the grim or patriotic realism of their lives and opinions are detailed with com plete fidelity. Here is a corrective to the pretty, sentimental view of rustic life:—
A bereaved husband was speaking of hia wife in her last illness. 'Her sat up sudden in the bed, and saith, 'I be a-gain' up the Clave.' (Lustleigh Cleave.] And I saith to her, 'Theo const not go up the Clave; thee ko a-dyin'.' And her saith me, 'Ye wicked, dommed old man.' Poor dear soul, they was the very last words as ever her spoke."
There is a whole short story in this other tale of a girl who came to Mr. Tarr for advice:—She had been engaged to a young man for several years, but the engage.
ment had just been broken off. She used to suffer dreadfully from toothache; and in the early days of his affection he sent her to the dentist, and paid for putting in a plate of teeth.
Was that plate of teeth a present that ought to be returned? Rightly or wrongly, I said that is was not; and T see she has it atill.
Of his own life Mr. Tarr gives us a few glimpses. He is a great authority on the navies of the ancients, and was asked to write an article on ships in Daremberg's and Saglio's Dictionnaire des Anti= quites.'" He asked for more space, and was told that he had been given as much for " Navies" as Navarre had been for "'Meretrices" and had te be. content with his answer. His life is no argument for the total abstainers, for ho was first given port when he was under two years old, and never spent a day in bed until he was fifty-five; but he thinks that port now is not what it was since phylloxera attacked the vines in 1878. All his comments on affairs are full of that sound common sense, that capacity to admit facts, which so frequently is found in the countryman, gentle, Yeoman or peasant, and as frequently surprises and befiles the townsman. He has patience with everything but humbug, and kindness for anybody but the pretentious. Few will read the book without thinking that the folk round the Wrey are lucky in their Squire.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.