11 AUGUST 1923, Page 22

The London Mercury.

This is an unusually good number of the London Mercury. Mr. Priestley's article on Maurice Hewlett has enthusiasm and conviction. Mr. Bailey's essay on Thackeray is interesting. too, though some of its points are familiar and its generaliza- tions as to the effect of serial-writing on some Victorian novelists are perhaps more plausible than true. Abundant justice is done to Mr. Galsworthy in Mr. Shanks's careful. critical, but generally-appreciative study. Mr. McDowall has breathed life into the dry bones of that ancient contro- versy, the respective merits of the country and the town. Nearly every line of Mr. Dalmon's poem, " Two in a Body," admits its debt to Donne ; we preferred Mr. Armstrong's solemn reverie and Miss Manning-Saunders's amusing metrical account of a donkey-race. It is the race, too, not the goal, which attracts us in Mr. Scott Moncrieff's short stories. They are trivial in intention, but their humour and irony and elusiveness have a charm.