Soliloquy of a Shadow - Shape. By Arthur H. Scaife. (Kerslake and
(3o. Is. 6d. net.)—In one way it is easy to be a satirist, for a satirist is irresponsible ; in another it is difficult, for the satirist's licence is only conceded to tha brilliant. l!fe may be partial, no just, an utterer of half-truths, or of sayings in which the truth proportion is much smaller, but he must be superlatively clever. Here is one of Mr. Scaife's stanzas :— "Who owns a city freehold of the soil, Commands the unpaid service and the toil
Of all his tenants. .Tenants I they're his slaves ; He holds them soul and body In a coil."
Now this might pass, for it has just so much truth in it as satire requires. There are landlords to whom the competition for houses gives power to oppress. But what feeble stuff ! And it is supposed to be spoken by Omir Khilyytim. It is true that the posthumous utterances of the "mighty dead," as the mediums give them, are very thin, the Tex exilis of Virgil.
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