BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
THERE is a noticeable improvement in the week's publica- tions—there are fewer than usual. Otherwise it is an average collection. Mr. Richard Aldington brightens the table. with A Book of" Characters" (Routledge). The set " Character " .never produced great literature, probably becatise novel and drama can show men so Much more convincingly by 'action and by interaction, and we miss this contrast Cif 'motive, this light-and-shade, When a single type is analyzed for uf4. And it is because .Theopluastus, the inventor 'of the Method, :introduces Os to his " Characters " Brit hand, as it were, by making them att and talk, that he still Seems: more acute and 'vivid than his followers. 'He " deacribei; , " humours " more than persons ; but a great delight can be drawn from his sketches by the recognition of the permanence of types in -Mankind through the Most .different ctreum- stances. There is nothing in the book livelier or more radically modern than his portrait of The Grumbler": " mistress smothers him with kisses : X should bet surprised,' says he, if they came from your heart.' He finds a .purse on the road :' Ali,' he says, ' but1 never fciund anYthhig worth having.' When he has won .a lawsuit by an unanimous verdict he reproaches the composer of the speech for omitting several points. His friends club together to lend him money without asking interest. Come, cheer up,' says one of them. 'Cheer up ? ' says he, when I have to pay it back to every one of them and be grateful into the bargain!?" Our English character-writers had more verbal wit., and more subtlety than Theophra.stus ; but their very cleverness grows tiring in the end. The volume should be read from time to time, not at a rush ; but it contains excellent material, and is a thorough survey of all set portraits from Theophrastus to Felicite, Comte,sse de Geniis. It is the same Madame de Geniis who makes the main interest of La. Belle Pamela (Lady Edward Fitzgerald), by Lucy Ellis and Joseph Turquan (Jenkins) ; for the authors of this monograph have discovered that their subject was the daughter of this lady by th,Due d'Orleans, and a surprising record of lies and concealments
ensues.
Mr. Herbert Edward Palmer, the author of The Unknonnt Warrior and Other Poems (Heinemann), is a poet of vigour and naiveté, refreshing to read, with an authentic ring to his verses now and then.: the plain antithesis to Mr. Aldoits Huxley, technician above all, who publishes his adaptation of Frances Sheridan's comedy, The Discovery (Chatto- and Windus). We are not given much indication of Mr. Huxley's emendations, though he says modestly that "an observant eye can always detect their position." It was his part to make the play more astringent ; for many parts of it, he states, were altogether too " meloobious and genteel."
Mr. Somerset Maughan has edited The Truth at Last, from Charles Hawtrey (Thornton Butterworth), an engaging volume of reminiscences, as one would expect. We have received from the Clarendon Press Mr. Keith Feiling's valuable study, A History of the Tory Party, 1640-1714. TIM LITERARY EPIT04.•
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