The Old Time Before Them. By Eden Phillpotte. (John Murray.
6s.)—There is nothing new under the sun, and even Mr. Phillpotts's studies of Dartmoor life are not unfamiliar : here is, as usual, the fresh atmosphere of the moor, where the winds blow strong, and carry a mingled smell of heather and peat and wood fires, where the road drops of a sudden into Widdicombe, down, as it seems, to the top of the square church tower; here is the usual danger of monotony, with the peculiar Dartmoor dialect, and the constant use of the first person, and here, as usual, the danger is avoided by the swift change from tragedy to comedy, from delicacy to force. Mr. Phillpotts is perhaps more at his ease in short stories than in his longer novels ; he is less hindered by the exigencies of plot and "situation," and can give himself more freely to that quiet humour and insight which are a perpetual delight. These new tales are as slender as can be, mere trivial incidents, to be a background for his men and women, and a motive for their actions ; but what we look for, and never fail to find, is the power of observation and description which Mr. Phillpotts invariably shows. What could be pleasanter than his account of Milly Crowther ? "A straight up-and-down sort of maid was she, hard as a flint and flat as a pancake, with her scant hair done in a knot, her face brown, her eyes
small and black, and her feet and hands terrible large. Stronger than many men she was, and revelled in man's work. None could work longer hours ; and never weary and never laughing and never crying."
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