BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
A MOST magnificent volume, weighing as much as ten ordinary books, has been received from Messrs. Longmans, Green and Co. The title is Game Birds and Wild-fowl of Great Britain and Ireland, and both plates and letterpress are by Mr. A. Thorburn. The type and reproduction are worthy ; but to turn from this book to A Box of Paints, by Geoffrey Scott (The Bookman's Journal), makes us wonder at the variety of art. Mr. Scott's poems are light and fresh, and the illustrations of Mr. Albert Rutherston are as delicate as the poems. The colour- printing is the best we have seen ; it is difficult to believe that the tinting is not done by hand. Sir Charles Holmes, the Director of the National Gallery, publishes this week an account of the Italian Schools as represented in the National Gallery (Bell) and applies his conclusions to modern art.
Another book with well-chosen illustrations is Mr. Frank Kendon's Mural Paintings in English Churches during the Middle Ages (The Bodley Head). Mr. Max Beerbohm publishes another volume of caricatures, Things New and Old (The Bodley Head).
In The Continuity of Letters, Mr. John Bailey collects some of his later periodical work and lectures. Mr. J. C. Squire comes more definitely to judgment in Essays on Poetry (Hodder and Stoughton) than in his previous critical volumes. There seems to be much more abstract criticism here : he begins with two lectures on "Subject in Poetry," and includes two essays on "The Future Poet and our Time "; but the copiousness of his quotation proves that he does not move in the most theoretical and unearthly reaches of criticism. Messrs. Heinemann increase the number of authors who are completely available in limited, signed editions by The Manaton Edition of Mr. Galsworthy's works. The first two volumes begin on The Forsyte Saga.
Mr. Ralph Nevin gives a very loose and vivacious record of " Mayfair before the inroads of the New Rich " in The World of Fashion, 1837-1922 (Methuen). Messrs. W. Hodge send a new volume in their series of Notable British Trials. namely, The Trial of Neill Cream, by Mr. W. T. Shore. Cream's were sordid murders, and this volume is not psychologically of great interest ; but the scholarship of the series will keep away the merely morbid. We may conveniently place next A History of Mediaeval Ireland, by Edmund Curtis (Mac- millan). Much of the period with which Mr. Curtis deals has not previously been thoroughly examined.
Mr. Hilaire Belloc found for his new book, The Road, sur- prising publishers, The British Reinforced Concrete Engineer- ing Co., Ltd. It is admirable that a commercial firm should seek to engage the interest of specialists in a book which has the virtues of supple intelligence and clear style. Professor J. Arthur Thomson writes on a very general topic in What is Man? (Methuen) and discusses it from the standpoint of Modern Science. In Tolstoi the Teacher M. Charles Baudouin treats of Tolstoi as " a more radical educator than Rousseau."
Three novels are worth attention : The Trail of the Hawk, by Sinclair Lewis (Cape) ; The Village, by Ivan Bunin (Seeker) ; and Smoke Rings, by G. B. Stern (Chapman
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