CIVILISATION AND CULTURE

ALTHOUGH Strange Wonders is not in fact Mr. Sykes's first book, one may greet him as a new writer. Wassmuss was of interest to a restricted public ; Strange Wonders will be a

delight to all who have been waiting to see filled an enviable and essentially English place in letters by a successor in this generation to Mr. Max Beerbohm. Years ago, when Some

People appeared, it seemed that Mr. Nicolson would succeed, but he has passed on to graver occupations. It is too early to predict how Mr. Sykes will exploit his talents. It is enough to say that by one story in this book he excites the most eager

anticipations. He, or his publishers, have collected eight pieces which differ greatly in form, temper, merit, and, I should guess, in the date of their composition. In an enchanting introductory essay Mr. Sykes claims for them a common hero, le fou anglais, but it is impossible to find this justified in "Champagne and Mrs. Chest" or "The Wailing Wall." In- deed I cannot see why Mr. Sykes thought this latter sketch worth printing unless it was for the personal gratification of defining his attitude to a question of universal controversy.

The longest and cleverest part of the book is an admirable story called " Invention." Mr. Garton, a prosperous novelist, visits a pseudo-Cypriote island, is entertained at the Residency, and finds inspiration there for a short story and a novel. Mr. Garton's ghastly character and the horrors of his reception are brilliantly studied. The theme is the works by Mr.

Garton which spring from his visit. The novel arises from a story which he himself fabricates in a despairing effort to carry off a painful dinner ; the short story in an insubstantial, dream-like way, is derived from his actual experience. His host and hostess await its publication with obscene apprehension, and find the only passage taken directly from life :

" ' Have a drink. The women will be down in a minute.'

Acklam pointed to a tray and began to read the papers. Presently there was a sound of finery and Mrs. Acklam came into the room with her daughter.' "

The story within the story is given in full. It is first-class parody of the Maugham-Nash's school of fiction, full of ruthless and delectable touches of vulgar language and confused

geography, but it is more than this ; it is a penetrating study of the true springs of literary imagination. (There is a subtle bye-plot when Mr. Garton himself suffers from this imagination

in overhearing a description of his own inglorious attempt at seduction.) In its precision and felicity and exquisite nicety

of fancy, " Invention " is comparable to the best of Mr. Beerbohm's work. It has that rare, supremely delightful, barely detectable unreality—the inebriation of the first bottle. "The Banquet and the Boy" is sound rapportage of the kind in which Mr. Byron excells. Three little sketches deal delight-

fully with the interesting and quite common phenomenon of the awful gulfs in social intercourse which make certain human beings totally unable to meet at all on the same plane of existence. " The German Character" looked easy to write. Mr. Sykes's drawings are expressive but very ugly on the page. I should have preferred the book without them.

It is perhaps invidious to compare Mr. Sykes and Mr. Byron. Each appears in the other's book. They have travelled together and shared many appalling experiences ; they once collaborated on an unreadable novel. Mr. Sykes is a new writer and to that extent an amateur ; Mr. Byron is an inveterate and indefatigable professional ; he began writing before most of his generation and will, I hope, long flourish when the rest of them have given up. They have an almost identical sense of humour, but there is an essential difference between them which must be noted and can best be stated by saying that Mr. Sykes is civilised and Mr. Byron is cultured. Mr. Sykes is at home in Europe. He sees England as an outlying province of a wide civilisation ; he is by education a member of Christendom. Mr. Byron suffers from insularity run Amok ; he sees his home as a narrowly circumscribed, blessed plot beyond which lie vast tracts of alien territory, full of things for which he has no responsibility, to which he acknowledges no traditional tie ; things to be visited and described and confidently judged. So he admits no limits to his insatiable aesthetic curiosity and no standards of judge- ment but his personal reactions. It is a grave handicap, but Mr. Byron's gusto is so powerful that the reader can only applaud.

His latest book describes a strenuous search for architectural masterpieces in Persia and Afghanistan. He was richly rewarded, and is able to support his admirable photographs with copious verbal observations. These reports of ruins rapidly falling into worse decay should prove valuable to subsequent travellers who wish to appreciate the rate of dilapidation, but most of his readers will prefer the savage and pungent narrative of the actual events of his journey. He has chosen a form that is exceedingly difficult to handle—the selected journal— which presents two opposite dangers, that of over-artful revision and of discourteous take-it-or-leave-it, salt-on-the-tail,

slap-dash jottings. Of the two, he is more liable to the second disaster and sometimes allows himself slip-shod phrases such as " chloroformed with opium," but for the most part the writing is pointed and energetic. The scraps of conversation which he occasionally reports are of outstanding