THE LONDON MERCURY.
The balance of 'he Mercury shifts continually—one month the earlier part, the poetry, is best worth reading ; next month all the weight is in the tail. The November issue seems strongest in its poetry. Mr. Kenneth Ashley has four poems included, uneven in technique, tact all of marked individuality. Mr. Linklater writes a poem in which he mocks and imitates eighteenth-century lyrics with a charming competence and urbanity. There is a translation (or " imitation ") of Calderon by Mr. Santayana, a frightening twelve lines from Mr. W. H. Davies, and a good poem from Mr. Martin Armstrong. 'Mr. Priestley's essay, "In Praise of Mr. Jacobs," is an excellent example of the gOod humour and charity of the Mercury's criticism. In writing of Flecker Mr. Shanks balances on the fence with precision : we are given all the praise we could expect and told that Flecker would have written better had he lived longer. Mr. Gilbert Norwood writes with his cheerful and readable obscurantism on the redundancy of good books. Mr. Belloc discusses historical novels and concludes that "the prime test of success in historical fiction" is "not only to make the past live as it actually was, but to make its incon- ceivable oddities conceivable." The most lively article is Mr. Geoffrey Dearmer's discussion of Hymns, Happy, and Unhappy, in which he points out the faults of our modern hymn-books.
Previous page
