When Ghost Meets Ghost. By William de Morgan. (William Heinemann.
6s.)—" Please understand," says the writer, "that the story is giving at great length incidents that passed in fractions of a minute—incidents Time recorded currents calamo for Memory to rearrange at leisure." After this explanation, it is difficult either to commend or to con- demn the amazing length of Mr. de Morgan's novel. Here is a book which must of necessity be set aside for a summer holiday, for long, lazy days with its nine hundred closely printed pages; and yet there is in it not one word too many, not a trace of verbosity or accumulation. It is rather that Mr. de Morgan's powers of observation have by now been strung up to an abnormally high pitch, so that each detail is minutely described, each simile worked out to its logical con- clusion. Add to this faculty it eo mplex plot, ands dense crowd of characters, and the length of the book is not only explained, but atoned for. Moreover, the writer's English is, as usual, admirable. We cannot, for the pleasure it gave us, and for its delightful epirit, refrain from quoting the following sentence : For these were the days of crinolines; of hair in cabbage- nets, packed round rubber-inflations ; of what may be called proto-croquet, with hoops so large that no one ever failed to get through, except you and me ; the days when dih the kt marts was the last new tune, and Landseer and Mulready the last words in Art."
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