A DOORWAY IN FAIRYLAND. By Laurence Housman. (Jonathan Cape. Os.
net.)—MOONSHINE AND CLOVER. (Same author, publisher, and price.)
In these two volumes Mr. Laurence Housman has reprinted fairy-tales from four previous volumes ; but the tales in Moonshine and Clover are strangely better than those in its companion volume. In A Doorway in Fairyland Mr. Housman reminds us of a playful and gracious mother talking to her children in her best artificial baby-talk. "And then some- thing very big and sad came to pass," "People very grand and grown-up came to the wood-side where she flowered so gaily, and caught her by the golden hair of her head and pulled her up by her dear little roots, and carried her quite away from Hands-pansy to a place she had never been in before "—such passages alternate with passages of heavy pseudo-poetical description after this fashion : "Low down in the west the new moon, leaning on its side, rocked and turned slowly in its sleep ; and there, facing the air through the cleared night, the blue moon hung like a burning grape against the sky. Like the heart of a sapphire laid open, the air flushed and purpled to a deeper shade. The wind drew in its breath close and hushed, till not a leaf quaked in the boughs ; and the sea that lay out west gathered its waves together softly to its heart, and let the heave of its tide fall wholly to slumber. Round- eyed, the stars looked at themselves in the charmed water, while in a luminous azure flood the light of the blue moon flowed abroad." It is absurd to expect a child to enjoy descriptions like this ; no child will enjoy, either, Mr. Housman's literary fustian in such a sentence as this : "So they escaped, slitting the swift hours with ungovernable speed." But in Moonshine and Clover things improve. Mr. Housman gives us more action and dangerous adventure than his title would suggest and tells excellent tales with the interested delight of a pure story-teller. There are stories in both volumes which would satisfy a child, but, if only one is to be bought, it should certainly be Moonshine and Clover. The books are generously illustrated with wood engravings by Miss Clemence Housman, from the designs of the author. They are laboriously executed in a style suggestive of the Pre-Raphaelites.
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