BOOKS.
THIS- WEEK'S BOOKS..
MR. SHANE LESLIE'S Life of Mark Sykes (Messrs. Cassell)- has appeared. Commemorating- a man notable above all for the attraction- which he had for his contemporaries,
it seems a charming biography. There are some most exciting extracts from a book which Sir Mark Sikes had
contemplated, The Caliph's Last Heritage. This is the account- of Ibrahim. Pasha :- " Ibrahim; like Saladin, was the result-ofinter-marriage between Kurd and Bedawi. The Bedawi is, indeed, the strangest ofall mankind. His:- material civilization is about on a par with that -oil a Bushman, yet. his brain.is as elaborately and subtly. developed as that of any Englishman with a liberal education. There is no , reasonable argument he cannot follow, no situation. which he =mot' immediately grasp, no man whom he cannot comprehend ; yet there- is no manual act he can perform. How different from. the • Kurd, whose hands are ever ready and busy, .but. whose mind has many closed doors and blocked-up passages. A Kurd is the simplest and most gullible of mortals. His fear of a man who- can read the Koran is piteous ; his wickedness the wickedness of a wild animal ; his uninquisitiveness great.; his industry immense." It is a book which one hesitates to put down.
Mr. Frederick - Harrison's book, De Senectute, is published: by Messrs. Fisher. Unwin. There are a dialogue on old age, , some memoirs of the Victorian era, a story of Constantinople : and a summary of modern attempts to form a general .syrt-• thesis of thought. An attractive, urbane volume.
Messrs. Methuen publish_ Mr. Ramsay Muir's Politics and Progress, which is a. short; general survey of-the field of politics from a progressive but anti-Socialist standpoint. It is at
the- moment, of course, of considerable topical interest.
Messrs. Jonathan Cape publish an illustrated' study, of Nicolas Poussin, by Mrs. Esther. Sutra. It has a preface! hyz
Professor William Rothenstein. Very characteristic: is one.; sentence in this introduction :-
" It is no use waiting for. inspiration. Constant practice is:the net spread for truth ; for truth,. like a wild creature, is shy- and wary, and unless the net be unsuspected and ever ready it may be spread in vain."
How true this is as- a particularization ; how false as-a generali- zation I Another attractive book, also illustrated by photo- graphs, is by Mr. Ernest C. Pulbrook on English-Country Life-and` Work, published by Messrs. -Batsford. The -photographs are delightful, save that one would gather from them that Mr. Pulbrook is a little frightened of such things as the steam tractor. Surely this is a pity. We have absorbed the reaper and binder with its great wheel till it seems one of the most beautiful of country objects. The steam or motor tractor will never be beautiful, but we shall probably some day love it—with the love no doubt that we accord •to pigs rather than to nightingales.
Miss Dorothy Canfield publishes another novel, Rough Hewn (Jonathan Cape). It seems long, careful and witty.
Mr. E. V. Odle has written a story called The Clockwork Man, which is published by Messrs. Heinemann. It is a striking, imaginative adventure story.
Mr. Edgar Lee Masters publishes a new novel, Children of the Market Place (Messrs. Hodder and Stoughton). The publishers say on the dust cover : " Mr. Masters, by a prodigious effort of imagination, has written a fictitious autobiography." I am glad to see that it is not quite so prodigious in size at least as his last effort, Domesday Book, as to whose merits I had so marked a difference of opinion with the author and
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