A LION TAMER4 THERE is a resemblance between the writers
of Reminiscences (or some of them) and those gentlemen called Entertainers who appear on a variety stage in company with a Grand Piano and pour out a rapid series of songs and stories, each linked to the other by some such phrase as—" Which reminds me of a little thing that happened to me only last week."
• The Image and other Plays. By Lady Gregory. London : Putnam. 151.1 t Adventure, ; Social and By Douglas Ainslie. London: Fisher 1:7nwin. L213.3
Such is Mr. Ainslie's method. He has led an interesting,
though a somewhat official life, and has met a great variety of important people, and he links together his memories,
anecdotes, and stories with an agreeable patter. The book has many virtues and vices. The vices are those which are common to most autobiographies—too sparing a use of the blue pencil and an occasional tendency to record facts which are completely negative and empty of significance. For in- stance, such a phrase as "My dear, sweet aunt Minnie, mother's sister, married an Irishman, Sir Thomas Snagge," might, for the purpose of public print, be equally well rendered by " My aunt Lady Snagge," and the following reference to Professor Gilbert Murray is of no conceivable interest :-
" I met him occasionally at H. J. Maynard's rooms in St. John's College while we were undergraduates, but have not done so since Oxford, save at the Philosophical Congress, also at Oxford, held quite recently. His versions of the Greek classic poets are not well known to me, as I prefer to read them in the original with the old-fashioned Bohn translation, or still better the Loeb, to help me rapidly over the difficult passages."
Another fault of Mr. Ainslie's is an incomplete control of syntax and of the significant use of words. But let us turn to the virtues of his book, which are many. Mr. Ainslie has met an enormous number of " lions " and he has much that is agreeable and interesting to tell us, both about them and about his own experiences. There is an amusing anecdote about the Oxford Alpine Club, whose custom it was to explore the walls, roofs and upper windows of Oxford under coves of darkness. On the return journey of one of these adventures one of the party accidentally entered the bedroom of a lady, the relative of the Head of a college. The lady was naturally much alarmed, but all might have been well had not the mountaineer thought it his duty to embark on an elaborate apology " and an explanation of the chief aims and objects of the Oxford Alpine Club." This increased the alarm of the lady ; the college was roused and the too punctilious moun- taineer was heavily fined and his name " struck off all manner of books."
A great variety of personages pass across the scene. Glad. stone, Aubrey Beardsley, Renan, the Queen of the Nether.
lands, Sarah Bernhardt, Wilde, Dizzy, Labouchere, Prince Francis of Teck : Tennyson on a yachting expedition reading "Locksley Hall" to a company of potentates and beating time to it on the shoulder of the Emperor of Russia ; " Labby " boasting " his mythological misdeeds as others their equally mythological virtues " ; Lord Acton, with Tit-Bits protruding from his greatcoat pocket, remarking that he found in it so much that he could not find elsewhere. And though Mr, Ainslie never says anything very illuminating or profound about any of them, he provides enough intriguing sidelights to make his book an exceedingly pleasant entertainment.
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