The Loves of Miss Anne. By S. R. Crockett. (James
Clarke and Co. 6s.)—It has become a platitude to say that every new book of Mr. Crockett shows his characteristic merits and characteristic faults ; and yet it is almost all that can be said. His work scarcely alters ; he has found his line for better or worse, and he sticks to it. It may be added that the merits are real and not too common, and the faults very displeasing to any one with a cultivated taste. The new story is on the old theme of the apprentice's love for his master's daughter,—in this case a shepherd boy and a very capricious and spirited girl, who treads the narrow path between fan and ill-breeding with rather un- certain steps. The boy becomes a land-agent, helps to rescue the girl from the insults of a drunken brother, and marries her after some pretty love-making on the hills by moonlight. The tale is told by Miss Anne's faithful companion, a wearisome young person who mistakes high jinks for high spirits. The date is apparently quite modern ; but Mr. Crockett is not happy in his pictures of upper-class society, which in his hands seem as un- familiar as the Middle Ages. With his village folk he has a surer touch, and the portrait of MacTaggart, the Galloway forester, is a fine and memorable piece of work. The landscape —Galloway and Midlothian—is pleasantly described, and there is about the whole book a good humour and good health which are not so common-in these days as to be lightly disregarded. It is a pity that Mr. Crockett will not realise that vulgarity is in itself bad art, and in no way contributes to the realism of a narrative. To describe a lady as being " smooth as a pat of butter done up in black satin," and to insist that when a certain minister shook hands "you were left with the general feeling of having reached down a half-cured. ham from the joists," are faults of taste which have no possible place in literature.
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