"Most Lovixe Mere Fotty." By Paul Bloomfield. Hodder and Stoughton. 7s, 6d In spite of Magdalen tower on the wrapper, this is not another attempt to depict post-war Oxford, though incidentally it succeeds very well in doing s0. _The Undergraduate hero, feeling that life is hollow, goes for a long tramp in the country near Oxford, and loses his way. He -is saved by a highly providential meeting with a young, vain, and not wholly admirable girl, with whom he falls deeply in love. All appears to go well, till her mother intervenes, and she acquiesces with deplorable readiness in the intervention. -As a result, he has a breakdown, but recovers, strengthened by his experience and determined to face life more steadfastly.
People who see in youthful soul. storms nothing but silliness will grunt "Calf Love!' and pass on. Mr. Bloomfield is, happily, not one of them, and sees that ithe calf reaches certain heights of romance which its maturer brethren coo never regain.
The weakness of the book is not in its sentimentality, but in its construction, and its occasional cliches, especially concerning. Nature. Between the description of the young man's Oxford life and the account of his-love affair there is a long digression on his childhood's loves, which is, by itself, the best thing in the book. Mr. Bloomfield: remembers better than most writers how intensely one felt small things when one was a child. In describing Oxford life, he shows how Futility and Wisdom go hand in hand in its conversation, and he succeeds in conveying that atmosphere of clear thought all mixed with unsubdued romanticism, which makes University life such a uniquely charming thing.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.