The best idea of Robert Paltoek's classic The Life and
Adventures of Peter Wilkins (Dent, 21s.) may be extracted from the title page, whereon the author enumerates the adventures of his hero and of his " wonderful passage through a subterraneous Cavern into a kind of new world ; his there meeting with a Gawry or flying woman, whose Life he pre- served, and afterwards married her, his extraordinary Conveyance to the Country of Glums and Gawrys, or Men and Women that fly. Likewise a description of this strange Country." It will be new reading to many, and even those who admit, with the reviewer of 1750 that " It seems to be the illegitimate offspring of no very natural conjunction, Hie Gulliver's Travels and Robinson Crusoe," will surely agree with Leigh Hunt as to its beauty, and with Charles Lamb that we have " classics of our own without being beholden to insolent Greece or haughty Rome." Paltock is more vital than Defoe, and kinder than Swift. His writing has no motive but pleasure. Mr. Edward Bawden's ridiculously fantastic illustrations exactly match the spirit of this captivating book.
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