Shorter Notices
Windfalls. By R. C. Trevelyan. (Allen and Unwin. 8s. 6d.)
ONLY 350 copies of this book have been published, and these have presumably been snapped up,some weeks since. Let those readers who were not quite quick enough off the mark now borrow from their prompter friends and hope that the loan will be forgotten. For these notes and essays, whether concerned with the great qualities—courage, kindliness, seriousness—or even with tiny detail' of observation—the movement of a swan's head, the sound of wood- cutters knocking blocks into an oak tree—are apt to be sipped and savoured rather than swallowed at a gulp. There is, indeed, a reflective rural leisureliness about the book that gives the lie to Berenson's accusation, made when a succinct answer deprived him of a theological argument, " Ah, Trevy, what a grammarian you are! Accurate statement, though earnestly pursued, leads Mr. Trevelyan neither to evade difficult subjects nor to limit the field of perception and recollection. The sources of inspiration, Homer's I similes, pace in poetry, a game of soldiers played by the three Trevelyan brothers for years on end, find him equally at ease ; I and while many books of miscellaneous jottings give the impression that they have been scraped together, a penny here and a penny there, and left the author bankrupt, this on the contrary appears as the overflow from a private store so large that it can no longer be contained. The reader is proportionately enriched.
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