gium"; yet he does leave one with a greatly increased respect for the spirit and achievement of the now almost legendary Captain Cook. It is this book which Knopf has had beautifully printed and illustrated in England for the 1925 market.

The golden mean has been achieved very skilfully by Sylvia Lynd in "The Mulberry Bush" (Minton, Balch), a volume of sketches of English life which cannot possibly offend the sentimental and is unlikely to outrage any of the intelligentsia into whose hands it may fall. There is nothing new in it, but the materials have been handled with considerable grace. The author possesses a fund of mild irony, some rather conventional whimsicality, and a fairly large amount of insight. Her word sense is good and occasionally she achieves a really telling bit of characterization, as in the following: "Then would come silence, a long, choking silence, in which he seemed to lie in ambush waiting for her to blow her nose." Mrs. Lynd's subjects range from youth to age and from bounding health to serious sickness. She is perhaps at her best with a humorous subject. "Tact" and "Romaunt de la Rose" are the best pieces in the book, with "Journey's End" and "The Sybarite", studies of age and childhood respectively, not far behind.

The purpose of Perry Belmont's volume on "National Isolation an Illusion" (Putnam) is plainly indicated in the title. The author endeavors first of all to show that the United States has not been and never can be isolated from Europe; and, secondly, he attempts to prove that the Democratic party, "created at the birth of our democratic Republic, preponderant when our foreign policy was formu

lated. . . derives its indestructible vitality from the principles upon which it was instituted principles which Ilie at the foundation of the Government of the Republic". In the course of his argument, Mr. Belmont reviews our entire history from the time of the formation of the earliest parties; and he goes into such detail and documents his contentions so heavily as to make out a case which, at the very least, definitely challenges attention.

The light verse of the earlier years of this century has come in for much justifiable abuse. Yet Houghton Mifflin Company have bravely reissued Curtis Hidden Page's twenty year old translation of the "Songs and Sonnets of Pierre de Ronsard" - and omens to the contrary, it is well worth reading in this day. Possibly the translation might not have remained so fresh if Mr. Page had employed, unflavored, the poetic idiom of his day. But he had the excellent judgment to translate Ronsard, not in the "diction" of 1900, but in the speech of the Elizabethan contemporaries of the French poet. The original edition of the translation was a limited one, designed by Bruce Rogers. The occasion of this edition is the four hundredth anniversary of the poet's birth. It makes no pretensions to the elaborateness of Mr. Rogers's production, but it is an excellent example of handsome typography. The volume includes an interesting biographical sketch and some rather technical notes.

"When he was young he was too young." Thus does Max Eastman characterize the early achievements of "Leon Trotsky" (Greenberg). Though born to the name of Bronstein, of well to do and enterprising parents, the boy who was later to figure so spectacularly

in the eyes of the world soon changed his name to Trotsky. It was under this name that he moved through the ever changing, hazardous circles of revolutionary Russia. The book is a rapid, interesting narrative of his experiences, both mental and physical, during those years of early youth which led up to his final triumph as military head of the Bolshevist party. Its pictures, especially of Trotsky the boy, are clear and colorful. They supply a graphic history of the early pioneers of revolutionary thought. Of the action that finally came as a result of these endeavors, Mr. Eastman has little to say. He declares in his introduction: "The chief thing to be gained by visiting Soviet Russia is a feeling of the characters of the Bolshevists. To a simple man that makes Bolshevism intelligible." He has, therefore, made a sincere effort to paint the portrait of Trotsky's youth, to show the forces that converged to make a Bolshevist possible. If this study does not satisfy the casual reader, we can only conclude that even so careful a characterization and chronicle of events as Mr. Eastman's book leaves a hundred questions about present day Russia still unanswered. Probably they cannot now be answered satisfactorily by anybody, and recent changes in Trotsky's status can only serve to lessen the effectiveness of some of Mr. Eastman's comments.

Fridtjof Nansen was only twenty when he made his first Arctic expedition in 1882. Woodsman, hunter, and fisherman, he was very naturally interested in zoology, and decided to study the life and physical features of the Arctic. He took passage aboard a sealing vessel, and his book, "Hunting and Adventure in the Arctic" (Duffield), is a bold and enthusiastic account of the "Viking's" maiden voyage. There

is the gripping tale of icebound adventure, of navigation among the drifting floes, of hunting and killing the saddleback and the curious, hooded bladdernose seals, of encounters with the bottlenose whales, polar bears, and man eating sharks. Glints of humor, grave dangers gamely weathered, abounding details of deep sea creatures of the North, and many drawings by the writer acquaint one with the Nansen who was later destined to become a famous explorer and author.

The "Dream Tapestries" of Louise Morey Morey Bowman (Macmillan) are charming fragments of prettiness. They are like figures painted on tissue paper, faint, perishable, and without connection. One misses the pattern of these poems which are, for the most part, merely an expression of conventional thoughts about the "icy fingers of the rain", the "bare black branches", moonlight on beautiful ladies swooning on marble benches with apple green scarfs around their necks. But one likes the things she writes about apples

limned here academically yet richly. That Flecker had genius for social as well as æsthetic criticism, "a most vigilant humor, pomp and parade" about him as well as about his lovely words and rhythms, together with all sorts of "sharp-edged clarity", not only Douglas Goldring and now Dr. Hodgson have shown us unforgetably; in addition his own prose works, such as "The Grecians" (valuable suggestions looking toward educational reforms), attest.

A work of unusual historic importance is "Austria in Dissolution" (Doran), the personal recollections of Stephan, Count Burián, who during the years 1915-17 and 1918 held the high diplomatic office of minister for foreign affairs in the government of AustriaHungary. Count Stephan writes with a strict adherence to the facts of international wartime relationships between the Central Powers and the Entente. He deals successively in his opening chapters with the varied internal and external forces that compelled ultimate participation in the war by the numerous nations which in 1914 declared their neutrality. The subsequent chapters cover with perfect frankness the inner workings of Austro-Hungarian diplomatic policies and problems, peace overtures and negotiations, the gradual undermining at home of the Empire, the persistent but unavailing efforts of Count Stephan for a settlement of the catastrophe, which ended finally in the downfall of the dual monarchy.

No amount of Pepysiana can ever match the charm of the great Diary itself, but it is to the researches and sympathetic scholarship of such men as J. R. Tanner that we owe much of our real knowledge of Pepys, man and statesman. As one of the chief authori

ties on Pepys, Mr. Tanner has succeeded in giving us a book that is in essence a succulent sampling of the Diarist's work, as well as a careful biographical sketch of that part of his life not covered by the Diary. He calls it "Mr. Pepys" (Harcourt, Brace). Here we see Mr. Pepys at home; Mrs. Pepys of the "comely person" who irritated her neat husband by leaving "her things lying about"; the Diarist as a public servant, good fellow, humanist, and insatiable taster of life. It is a book for students of Pepys's life and times, as well as for those readers who enjoy the Diary simply as the chronicle of a singularly full and interesting life. Most busy readers nowadays have dipped into the Diary just enough to look forward to some time of unprecedented leisure for its further perusal. To those who are unwilling to wait till old age has left time on their hands for just such longed for delights, we recommend this book as a clearly outlined full length portrait of "Mr. Pepys".

Whatever hero worship there is in R. F. Dibble's "John L. Sullivan" (Little, Brown) is hero worship with the tongue in the cheek. Of Alfred Dreyfus, after his acquittal and restoration to military rank, it was cynically said that his only virtue was his innocence. John L. Sullivan's only virtue was the honesty in the ring which he was forever proclaiming to the world. To the end of his days he was blatantly shouting on every occasion; "Yours on the level, John L. Sullivan." Viewed coldly, Sullivan is one of the ugliest figures in all the long annals of the prize ring. He was a moron and the most cruel of bullies. Like all bullies, he had a strong vein of cowardice in his nature. That did not show in the ring, for there he was always too supremely confident. The generosity with which

he has been credited was the generosity of the waster. That Mr. Dibble is conscious of the true worth of his hero is evident in the mock heroic tone in which his narrative is couched. Figuratively speaking, he writes on something that he holds with a pair of tongs. The three names of prize ring history that stand conspicuously for downright brutality are those of John L. Sullivan, and Hooper and Berks of the golden age of British pugilism. Berks redeemed himself by dying greatly on the battlefield.

The second book to be published by the SN Society at Northampton, Massachusetts, is David Berenberg's

"Letters of Glaucon and Sarai". Mr. Berenberg is a teacher at the Rand School and is said to be an advocate of no poetic "ism" and to have no message to deliver. He has written a dramatic poem which takes place in ancient Judea. It is clearly and finely con

contemporary music? Value, he answers, is constant, and so one who distinguishes it in music of the past can also distinguish it in music of the present. And so Mr. Newman may now distinguish them with impunity, for what he does not enjoy is not first rate. But what of the argument that unfamiliarity of idiom may prevent enjoyment, and of the fact that music at first not appreciated for this reason was appreciated when the idiom had become familiar? Mr. Newman finds a convenient distinction between new harmony that talks sense and new harmony that talks nonsense, and insists (1) that only the second will fail to be appreciated, while the first will from its very nature impress the listener with its logic, and (2) that this has always been the case. But, in the first place, as Mr. Newman's own development shows, there is a limit to the receptivity of one's ear; and so, in the second place, a great deal of harmony that we recognize today as talking sense was not

its imagery, and the speeches are simple and impressive. Sarai speaks:

"I am alone,

I am afraid!

So much is darkness now at Galilee."

There are, in addition, more than a dozen poems in the latter half of the volume. "Semiramis", "Silences", "Road Song", and "Recognition" are a few of the finest.

"A Musical Critic's Holiday" (Knopf), to one reader at least, is decidedly inferior, both in content and in execution, to the rest of Ernest Newman's output, and only a rationalization of its author's critical hardening of the arteries. Are there, he asks, standards by which one may distinguish the first from the second and third rate in

points out that there were some who judged rightly of their contemporaries, and concludes that he is safe in judging his own. But there were many who judged wrongly, and he may be wrong, too. And so he has brought us no further than we were.

"A profound break in history, that is, a rearrangement of classes in society, shakes up individuality, establishes the perception of the fundamental problems of lyric poetry from a new angle, and so saves art from eternal repetition." In the introduction to his "Literature and Revolution" (International Publishers) Leon Trotsky thus postulates the existence of a new post-revolutionary art. In order to put his finger on the break, he devotes a chapter to pre-revolutionary art, sparing no words in expressing

his contempt for the literature which was created by hangers on of the governing and capitalistic class. From the point of view of both critic and revolutionist, this epoch bore no fruit that could sustain the proletariat. In his succeeding chapter on literary "fellow travelers" he describes the various schools of transitional art from which any new literature in Russia must be born. Such writers as Kliuev, Yessenin, Ivanov, and the more familiar names of Nikitin and Pilnyak he analyzes with a scrutiny that is partly literary and partly political. Futurism he calls a link between the creative intelligentsia and the people, to be regarded therefore as an important step forward. Though he describes the Formalist school as "arrogant and immature", he gives the devil his due in praising its scrupulous, if bigoted, attention to technique. If we cannot follow Trotsky clear through to his glowing predictions of a greater Socialist art where "the forms of life will become dynamically dramatic", we can get from this sharply outlined analysis and positive criticism some sort of picture of contemporary art developments in Russia today. It is not too much to say, also, that much of the clearness of the book is due to its expert translation, in the hands of Rose Strunsky.

In "The Muse in Council" (Houghton Mifflin), John Drinkwater endeavors to "relate to the theory of poetry and the practise of several poets". He considers, in turn, the poet in regard to tradition, conduct, and communication, and adopts the general attitude toward poetry governing all the various conditions of the art. His outlook is not biased with favoritism, and Mr. Drinkwater looks benignly, albeit critically, upon both the ancient and modern altars of poetry. His

treatment of Rupert Brooke is touched with real beauty and understanding. He states frankly that he does not expect people to agree with everything he says nor even, perhaps, with a majority of his views. However, whatever attitude one may take toward the "ecstatic muse", one will be sure to find in this fair minded and candid volume a most interesting expression on poetry by a poet of no mean reputation.

Here is one poet who has time to stand and stare. W. H. Davies, whose "Selected Poems" (Harcourt, Brace) have recently appeared, is not of any known school, though he follows the traditions of Blake and Wordsworth more nearly than he does the moderns. Indeed for all the twentieth century influence he betrays, he might have written a hundred years ago. His diction is clear and possesses a rightness that never calls attention to itself. He sees life with as fresh a light on it as on grass after a rain, and his craftsmanship has no unlovely contours. Woodcuts by Stephen Bone illustrate the book, catching exceedingly well the atmosphere.

It is agreeable to quit for a time the company of jazzing flappers, cocktail mixers, and modern grandmothers, in order to join Arthur Train “On the Trail of the Bad Men" (Scribner). Being deluged with prosaic facts usually means being correspondingly bored, but that is not possible in this instance. With humor, and in readable fiction form, Mr. Train succeeds in giving some interesting and amusing information on both old and modern law. His book will instruct you gratis on "Is it a crime to be rich?", on marriage and divorce, on being a juror, on just what happens if your dog steals, bites, and trespasses, and the astonishing trials of animals about the year