"THE ADELPHI."
[To the Editor of the SPF:CTATOR.] agree with almost all Mr. Alan Porter had to say last week about the Adelphi, in as far as he concerned himself with Mr. Middleton Murry's editorial writing and the contributions of "The Journeyman." But I thought he made one very striking omission in considering the work of Mr. D. II. Lawrence, and also as regards the Adelphi as a whole. He never once dis- cussed Mr. Lawrence as an artist, nor the Adelphi as a work of art. And yet to most of their readers it is probably this aspect, both of the novelist and the magazine, that appears important.
Like the Bishop who read Gulliver, for my part I don't believe the half of what Mr. Lawrence tells me about dark gods or the small and swarthy tweed-clad men who are their prophets on earth. And I don't care a fig for Mr. Murry's theories about indiviauality. But for me. the irresnonsible reader, both Mr. Lawrence and Mr. Murry produce the goods— magazines and novels that is, that are agreeable and even delightful to read. The Adelphi is the only magazine which I can buy at a railway bookstall if I want to read a story in the train. It is generally readable from beginning to end ; and just as Mr. Murry's magazine enriches a railway journey, so to me at least Mr. Lawrence's novels enrich the everyday world. They often seem to me very silly, and often very solemn, but—to be solemn in my turn—they seem to me to be useful books. They help to educate the perceptions, they help against the deadly superficiality and hastiness that is apt to make ordinary life dull. They are, in fact, what every true work of art has always been said to be—channels throughwhich the recipient (reader or spectator) is enabled to make new Dr improved contacts with other minds or with some aspect of the outside world. While Mr. Murry can still provide us with his little bit of good fiction, or a translation from the Russian each month, I am more than ready to continue as before to skip his theories about "Life," or in gratitude for "Kangaroo," or "The Doll," to ignore even Mr. Lawrence's most tiresome sex obsessions.—I am, Sir, &c., A COUNTRY READER.
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