FICTION.
FRENZIED FICTION-I'
Fr is no business of the reviewer of a new volume by Mr. Leacock, if he happens to be also a convinced admirer of that intrepid humor- ist, to forestall the joys of the reader by picking out too many plums. It is enough to say that, though strains of seriousness are not wanting, as in the fantasy of Father Knickerbocker's decadence and regeneration or the really moving fable of our debt to Father Christmas, Mr. Leacock retains an unimpaired command of his happy gift of disguising sanity in the garb of the ludicrous. In this he is a sort of modern counterpart of the better type of Court jester : he can also claim the support of Aristotle. There is always an ultimate core of shrewd common-sense in his burlesques, whether he is satirizing self-styled spies, who are obliged to fall back on revelations and disclosures ; or experts in world-politics ; or self-protective celebrities in their relations with interviewers ; or devotees of the strenuous or simple life. "The Prophet in Our Midst" is an admirable satire on the war pundit, who evades the questions of the plain 1/1An by emitting a cloud of terminological pomposities. Thus, when pinned down to a direct answer as to the future of the Dardanelles, the "Eminent Authority rides off triumphantly by observing that they "could easily be denationalized under a quadrilateral guarantee to be made a pars materia of the pactum foederis." In" Personal Adventures in the Spirit World" we have an account of the experiences of a convert to Spiritualism who gets into touch with Napoleon and Nelson and endeavours to extract useful information from them. The intellectual decadence of the spirits of the mighty dead, as judged by their communications, is fair game for the satirist, and Mr. Leacock makes exhilarating use of his opportunities. The adventures of the man who resolved to spend a month in the woods in a state of nature are a riotous exposure of the simple life craze. More trenchant, if less comic, is the admirable skit on the weakness of the elective system of education, a curious satirical complement to the serious objections put forward in The Value of the Classics, that remarkable American book which was recently reviewed in these columns. The young man who "co-opted Turkish, Music and Religion," and the other young man who was apparently loafing, but in reality "putting in a half-summer course of Introspection," are not too outrageous illustrations of the extravagances possible under this system. As for the egotistic actor-manager in the "Ideal Interviews," ho is essentially the same in type as the figure satirized by Mr. Arnold Bennett in The Regent. But as wo have said above, Mr. Leacock is not always jesting. The lessons of • Poems: 1914-1917. By Maurice Baring London : Martin Seeker. [1s. 6d, net, t Frenzied Fiction. By Stephen Leacock. London John Lane. 1.48 netj
I he war in regard to the children of to-day, with which the volume ends, are enforced with a passion of tenderness. Mr. Leacock is not one of the humorists who make a mock of holy things.
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