Spring Days. By George Moore. (Vizetelly and Co.)—We cannot but
regret that a literary artist of such undoubted power as the creator of Gwynnie Lloyd in "A Modern Lover," should
think it his duty to persevere in writing " realistic " novels. His preface to Spring Days, too, breathes a spirit of defiance to his critics which suggests the danger of his allowing self-respect as an artist to degenerate into aggressive egotism. Spring Days is, more- over, not relieved, as was even "A Drama in Muslin," with pas- sages of possibly too ambitious yet powerful description. We are, indeed, informed that the least vulgar of the decidedly vulgar, flirting, tennis-playing, eating—and drinking—daughters of the helpless Mr. Brookes was "a woman of Poe or Baudelaire ; and Carpeau would have loved her for a model, as she stood listening to her sister who fidgeted about the banisters." But this and one or two other passages are—or at least seem to be—bits of French pedantry. The descriptions of the daily life of the Brookes girls, and the story of the drifting of Frank Eseott, the nephew of an Irish Peer, and naturally a lad of good disposition, into love, and finally, apparently, into marriage with a barmaid, have the look of realism about them. It is to be hoped, however, that even barmaids are not in the habit of answering ruffianly admirers in the revolting manner in which one of them is represented as replying in this book. Spring Days is, it seems, a " prelude " to "Don Juan." We trust, for the sake of Mr. Moore's future repu- tation as a novelist, that it is also a prelude to something in every sense better.
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