Shorter Notices
Tins book, published only a few weeks before Hugh Kingsmill's death, is a collection of literary articles reprinted from the New English Review and other journals. They are, in fact, for the most part, extended book reviews, and as such they do their author great credit, though it is`true that they contain here and there some rather trivial back-chat with other writers. As a critic Kingsmill was blessed with courage and independence. In these essays he said much that needed saying, about such very different people as Mr. P. G. Wodehouse, Tennyson and Mr. Auden, the Roman Catholic historians and notably Mr. Bernard Shaw. There is an odd sug-
gestion that Barrie succeeded because he was a spoilt child, and a disappointing failure to appreciate Zuleika Dobson, bUt the articles are always stimulating even when they provoke disagreement. In the opening essay Kingsmill's own biographies are discussed and Lytton Strachey is appraised with discrimination. The perfect biographer, Kingsmill concluded, would have " the complete sym- pathy of complete detachment. Failing to attain this enviable state, a biographer will either be too indulgent or too severe, and it is better on the whole to be too indulgent."
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