OTHER NOVELS
Colin II. By E. F. Benson. (Hutchinson. 7s. &I. net.) That side of Mr. E. F. Benson's talent which is not employed in drawing portraits of smart and garrulous ladies inclines to the study of mysticism. In his new novel he expatiates once more on the Stanier family, whose ancestor in Elizabethan days had sold his soul to the devil. Mr. Benson kindly reminds his readers of this transaction, which he wrote about two years ago in Colin. Stories of the struggles between good and evil are always difficult to manage, and the accounts of the Black Mass given in great detail in this book are not really as startling as they are meant to be. The reader will feel that he certainly ought to be appalled by such blas- phemous doings, but will have difficulty in summoning up the horror, and still more difficulty in believing in the flood of evil power which descends upon the hero on demand. The author has resumed his more detailed and careful style of writing, and the picture at the beginning of the book of the four generations of Staniers, beginning with the terrible and doting old Lady Yardley, is much more horrifying than the nefarious bargain which is the motive of the book.
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