Page:Pacific Monthly volumes 9 and 10.djvu/78

58 thought, a broadened perception. And more than once the Reader fancies that he catches reflections of the political life upon which Mr. Tarkington is just launching.

(By Booth Tarkington. Price, $1.50. McClure, Phillips & Co.)

Mr. Davis' experience as war correspondent in Cuba evidently gave him the cue for this, his latest novel. A war story it is with a vengeance — a thrust and parry, a reek of powder and a streak of blood that set one's nerves a tingling with excitement. Royal Macklin, the hero, soldier and scion of fighting sires, is a right good sort and wins your sym- pathy at the very outset. Expelled from West Point, he betakes himself to Honduras to engage in a war of rev- olution there waging, with the purpose of rehabilitating his fair name as a sol- dier. He is possessed of an itch for ad- venture that leads him into all sorts of perilous situations and keeps the story going at a merry pace.

Mars has all the better of it — alas! — and Madam Venus is practically ig- nored — a fact which the multitude of the author's petticoated admirers will find it hard to forgive. Can it be that maturer years have weaned Mr. Davis from his fondness for sentiment? "Princess Aline" was purely a love story. "Soldiers of Fortune" was a love story built around a framework of ad- venture. And now we have a story in which the love element is almost en- tirely wanting. The deduction is ob- vious.

That which we find most admirable in the tale is the fineness of the ideals which impregnate it. Macklin is no swashbuckler. He is a soldier and a gentleman, actuated bv high standards and pure motives. Would that there were more of his stamp!

(By Richard Harding Davis. Price, $1.50. Chas. Scribner's Sons.)

Here is an amusing piece of Za!a *** fantasy for you. Fancy a

full fledged — pardon! a full scaled — mermaid voluntarily leaving her home in the further deeps and

entering the home of an English family in order to experience some of the ques- tionable delights of air-breathing mor- tals, and in the end to woo a young Englishman to her humid love.

It is a book that one impulsively de- scribes as **clever" without knowing exactly what is meant by that versatile and over worked adjective. The effect, here, is gained by introducing a foreign and mystical element — the Sea Lady — into an environment so conventional, so dominated by social traditions and usages that the resulting contrasts and the disturbance created by the inter- loper are highly diverting. This is the more so because the author is success- ful in relating the episode in a perfectly serious and matter-of-fact manner. It is like a comical story the narrator of which keeps a perfectly straight face while he is telling his anecdote, while his hearers are convulsed with laugh- ter.

TH* Poetry of Robert Broiv^AiA^

The expositors of Browning's poetry have been com- paratively few. His extreme subtlety, his marvelous complexity and the pro- furjdity of his wisdom have proved ob- stacles too formidable for any but the most courageous and painstaking of critics. For this reason, and for its es- sential value, the work will be highly prized by all lovers and students of the great poet-philosopher. To those who know, the author's name is sufficient recommendation for the excellence of the commentary. His preceding and similar treatise on the poetry of Tennyson has given ample proof of a thorough and scholarly critique.

The first chapter, contrasting the two great poets of the Victorean era, serves as a fitting introduction, and from there on we are led to an ex- haustive but never wearisome study of the poet, his art, his message, his phil- osophy of life, and so forth. Thor- oughness and comprehensiveness arc here, but, withal, a svmpathy and free- dom from captious criticism that leave no room for complaint.

(By Stopford A. Brooke, M. A. Price, $1.50. T. Y. Crowell & Co.)