"Tie Cramis op Gon—By Lewellyn Benga" New. Works" Baron The world apparently must have syntheses to-day of everything from Bible to the old Greek tales und back again. Judged by this stand lard Mr. Powys has done an exceed ingly good piece of work, He has given life to a story which every-tone ought to read, but which few {do these days, if our Sunday school alarmists "are in any way to be judged accurate. He has rendered fa familiar and welidloved story thrice welcome. It is a dificult task ride thus half-way between the new reader and the old. As he says in a foreword, it was his me tention to witte an impression of his experiences in the Holy Land, but his thoughts followed other The old, old gauge of battle and contrast between the ods of ancient Greece and the God of the Christians, comes once more to the fore front in this narrative essential story in the Old Testament. Or, to put it in another way and perhaps more accurately, the difference tween the ordinary conceptions of Pan and Christ, are the core of Mr. Powys's volume. Indeed, he presses this fact in a chapter he chooses from the works of Rabelais.
It portrays Pantagruc's ideas on the death of the heroes. It is the story of the Voice which came to 'Thamous, the pilot, when his ship was becalmed, and' which Inter me formed him that Pan was dead, It closes with the words of Pantagruel, to the effect that "For my part. I understand it of that great Saviour fof the faithful, Who was shame. fully put to death at Jerusalem, by the' envy and wickedness of "the doctors, priests and monks of the Mosaic' Law." Follows the play upon the word Pan, Greek for all.
With lusty gusto Mr. Powys checks along beside the narrative: of the Old Testament, giving vigorous and whole-souled. present-day marginal notation of all that occurs. If at times one feels his explanations are a bit earthy, yet he contrives always to keep in mind conception of the His feeling for of Janus is truly Gy) both great and noble, and filled with the join de vive of a hungry soul. The closing page, in which Powys transports us back to Capri fon an Easter Sunday morning, full of the deep feeling and. fra-france of life, which is his great. Contribution to this volume, Above alle loves life and the eternal energy, which is the core of the mystery in which we exist, In Capri at Easter time certainly we do come nearest to drinking in the festasy and the passion that seem= ingly was in the old worship of Pan, fand that on the surface at least seems to have gone out of our own, ascetic worship of Christ, W. B.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.