CURRENT LITERATURE
This series of essays (Lane, los. 6d.), reprinted from the Daily Herald, is a calendar of. country- life, of birds, plants, animals, the weather. Mr. Powys can evoke a pictt re of a season, as in his description of the whiteness of a June night, or the stillness of a September evening. He has a minute and true power of observation. He sees the little hairs on the edge of a ". tingling " beech-leaf, and describes the cuckoo's cry as cool and hollow, and notices pieces of shell on new-hatched partridge chicks. But the effect is fragmentary ; often the ideas seem rather to have been compiled than to have arisen spontaneously. His style is cumbrous. There are several inaccuracies and mis- spellings in his remarks on Anglo-Saxon month-names—the New English Dic- tionary gives the origin of " Sprout- kale '3- ; wulf-monath, win-monath, winter-Monath are not to be found in Bosworth and Toiler's dictionary, ost- monath should be spelt easter-monath. Many of Robert Gibbings smaller engravings are delightful. The bells, the fish in the first capital, the fox, the badger, and the hedge-hog are all solid, and show a strong sense of movement, a feeling for texture, and for
character in the animals. But the larger and more complex engravings seem rather crowded, and the different textures clash.
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