A Lover's Tale. By Maurice Hewlett. (Ward, Lock, and Co.
6s.)—We are somewhat bewildered by A Lover's Tats, which is, according to an author's note, a free adaptation of a genuine but little-known saga, and which seems in some respects to be a reversion to Mr. Hewlett's earlier work, and to the romantic writing of The Forest Lovers. Although the writer would have us fix our attention on the actual adventures of Cormac and Stangerd, we have an uncomfortable feeling that he is all the time laughing at us, that he has simply dressed up afresh the moat familiar figures, and is waiting to see whether we are taken in we suspect that we have often met Cormae in the guise of the passionate lover who degenerates into a domestic and irritable husband, that Stangerd is merely a flirt, and Della the ever-wonderful figure of the mother who understands her boy better than he understands himself. Perhaps we are self-conscious, and Mr. Hewlett has been perfectly sincere in this brave conception of types, of the eternal masculine and feminine; at all events, the style of the book is interesting. There is in it no attempt at passion : it is absolutely flat, like a wall painting, broad and strong of outline, independent of light and shade, possessing that freedom from niggling which is characteristic of old sagas.
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