FICTION.
HIS LAST BOW..
THE reports of Sherlock Holmes's death which gained currency. some years ago proved to be "greatly exaggerated," and we are further reassured, on the unimpeachable testimony of his friend Dr. Watson, that he is still alive and well, "though somewhat crippled by occasional attacks of rheumatism." Inasmuch, how- ever, as the famous detective emerged from a retirement of some seventeen yearn on the eve of the war, in consequence of the domi- ciliary visits of both the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary and with results of immense national importance, we think it rather indiscreet of Dr. Watson to specify his present residence. But there can be no harm in mentioning that his time is divided between philosophy and agriculture. He had completed a Prac- tical Handbook of Bee Culture just before the war, but he does not seem to have done anything further in the way of musical criticism since the publication many years ago of his masterly and mood- menial treatise on the Polyphonic Motets of Lassos. We are afraid that his rheumatism has impaired his powers as a violinist, and that the 500.guinea Strad which he picked up for 55s. seldom leaves its case. As for his taste in philosophy Dr. Watson is silent, but wo suspect him of Pragmatism. He is apparently still a bachelor and a misogynist, though invariably courteous to women, and his aversion from publicity has grown with advancing years. But while some changes may be observed in the character of the great detective—notably in his appreciation of Nature and country life— his friend and Boswell, the incomparable Watson, preserves all the ingenuous qualities that endeared him to us at the outset. In their last venture (August, 1914) he is the "same blithe boy as ever," in Sherlock Holmes's happy phrase, just as ready as of old to cast his practice to the winds end accompany his idol on the most daring and perilous quests. It is true that Sherlock Holmes told him in the " nineties " that after all he was "only a general practitioner with very limited experience and mediocre quali- fications." But at the moment Sherlock Holmes was playing a game. None the less, we sometimes wonder what Watson's patients thought of a doctor whose thee was so often neither his awn nor theirs. Asa collaborator he was generally a dissetrousfailure ("among your many talents dissimulation finds no place "), and, in the initial stages of the attemptto resoue Lady Frances Carfax, Sherlock Holmes declared that he could not recall any possible blunder which Watson had omitted. Still, he was, and is, a most careful chronicler, and an Idolater whose devotion stood the rudest tests. One cannot rid oneself of the suspicion that Sherlock Holmes, in spite of his aversion from publicity, is not altogether immense to the incense of flattery.
As for the stories, which, with the exception of the last, date- back to the time previous to Sherlock Holmes's retirement, their impressiveness is somewhat impaired by the frequency with which they end in a oonfossion. The best of them, to our way of thinking, is the tale of the abstraction and recovery of some important docu- ments from the Admiralty, in which we are introduced to Sherlook's brother Mycroft Holmes, the specialist in omniscience and "the moat indispensable man in the country," though he only draws 1450 a year, remains a subordinate, and has no ambitions of any kind. The most gruesome is "The Cardboard Box," end the element of the supernatural is effectively suggested hi "The Devil's Foot." But throughout we remain fascinated not so much by the unerring skill of Sherlock Holmes as by the minute precision of Watson in recording the mysteries in the unravelling of which his share was generally negligible and often ridiculous.
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