Hugh Deyne of Plas - ldrys. By Yore Clavering. (Hurst and Blackett.)—People
whose literary palates are not very sensitive, and who can endure much for the sake of a brisk story with a fine manly hero, a winning heroine, a feminine schemer who may be described as a diluted Becky Sharp, and plenty of incident to keep attention on the alert, may find in Hugh Deyne of Plas-ldrys a satisfying meal. Those, however, who demand that French verbs in the plural should not be coupled with adjectives in the singular ; who have a strong objection to the phrase "different to;" who like to see a preposition followed by the accusative case ; who confess to a rooted prejudice against threadbare quotations, and small jokes accentuated by italics to avert the remote possibility of their being missed by the hasty reader ; who—to put the matter briefly—are repelled by illiterate commonness of style, had better spare their sensibilities by leaving the book alone. We cannot enumerate the quotations and the jokes, but "double entendres" may serve as a sample of the French, and "there is a chance of Maude and I dancing" of the English. Vero Clavering writes of a certain remark, that it was "redolent of the truth." As she really has a story to tell, why does she not collaborate with some one who is, as she would put it, redolent of grammar ?
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