Tnowas Haror—By Arthur McDowall. pavourt.—By ber & Faber, London, 1278. Enggy 5/Loe™ Datie Ward, Lack, Lynn Dane, Ward, Lock, guna ate, kt, MES fy the every page i guaran low he belongs to the ages". thrill to is guaran-'Abraham Lincoln may well be ap-fact in quite a few of the chap-plied to Thomas Hardy O.M., un-iters the thrills are just a lift questionably one of, if not' the,|numerous and greatest figure in English litera-layerage intelligence. The story ture during the last half-century. starts off with a trans-Atlantic first work (Desperate Remed- tight made by a film star, a Jewish jos) was published in 1871, his last financier, and the pilot. The plane (Winter Words) in 1928, an in-crashes in Labrador, the financier terval of 57 years which has seen disappears from the scene, and the greater changes in our way of life|film star and the pilot are there-than any. other of treble that after involved in a struggle for a length in recorded history. sei {his volume volume Me. MaDe being witha gang of unscrupulous Labrador gold mine, the strogsle McDowall has scoundrels who have also discovered Critical study Pof Thomas 'Hasdy's track of the mine. All ends well, Seric Sey case urnd poetes a [of course, after innumerable shoot: Tee eh Bre eauired Vast ings and' knifings. The. film star amount of care and erudition. The {824 the pilot, together with a few] fat half of the book is devoted to [friends, secure control of the mine the novels, many of which frst ap- [384 the leading characters end up Pee cal aa gortads in the "Graphic" their trans-Atlantic fight to the Tad ether magazines, "Teas of the [stroma of the wedding march, With D'Urbevilles" is, probably, the most the acquisition of a gold mine as widely known, perhaps unfortunate. ®, Wedding present, the principals as it Is by no by ho means the best, ana 9 "Paydirt" are considerably more means the best, and Comnforcably off than in. the. frst octo tnrmassed by Jude the efapter when they were battling "The Mayor of Casterbridge through the real Atlar snorter Which foreed them down in Labea-IWS Srettect® combination, of dor.
"Paydirt" is not likely to set descriptive writing with the art of [the Thames afire, but for the novel portraying characters which live; Teader who likes his meat raw and the fortunes which befall his people his wine heady it should help to are, in neatly every ease, exactly|Pass an hour or two—J.W.e. those which, given such persons in such environment, would be bound to happen to them. INDEFINITE After years as a novelist, Hardy chose to change his medium of ex- Axo Now Gooneye, pression, and, with the exception Benn, London, 7/ of one volume of prose tales (A As a layman the Rev. Howatt Changed Man), from 1897 onwards Preemantle would have been un-he confined his attention to verse. interesting and the addition of a The poems naturally fall into twolclerical collar does. mot render him divisions, the vast epic drama of Jany the less so. There is nothing The Dynasts," to which Mr. Me- touching in middle-aged sim Dowall devotes two chapters, and land Mr. Freemantle is simp! the shorter poems. It may be true the point of childishness, He also of "The Dynasts" that much of the {holds a most indefinite view of matter might be just as well, if right and wrong, which is unusual not better, expressed in prose, but, in a Nonconformist minister and as Mr, McDowall rightly says, open leads him to the verge of disaster. the book where you will, there is Disaster, however, falls on someone hardly a page without an' accent of lelse, he himself going own or which fails to carry land even this hardly seems to dis-you in more absorption to the next. turb the serenity of his conscience.
Tt is.both easier and more diffcuit The rest of the characters in the to deal with the shorter poems: book have no. greater claim to. easier because extracts can be interest, end a doctor who believes quoted to illustrate the critic's re-[in a classic brusqueness of manner marks in a manner to which prose wearing. Mr. Hilton works do not lend themselves, and has made a rather meaningless more, dif ult because w poem is a study of an ineffectual man,—o.. creation complete in itself, and to atlampt to, Gieeet may, eaaly McDowall is never guilty. Of this BOOK NOTES leacend into banality, of which Mr.
poem, from, "Moments of Visio Mr, Murray is publishing the reit is impossible to omit a stanza: miniscences of Colonel Sir Percival Who's in the next room? who?
Marling, ¥v.c., under the title of "Rifleman and Hussar." Field-Marshal Lord Plumer contributes a Foreword.
jer Russell Bowie's two who Master: A Life of christ" and "The Inescapable are being issued by Mr. Murray in cheap editions at half-ajerown each.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.