30 MAY 1908, Page 22

The Human Boy Again. By Eden Phillpotts. (Chapman and Hall.

6s.)—Mr. Eden Phillpotts has a great knowledge of the nature of boys, and is perhaps even more familiar with their vocabularies. His present work is as entirely concerned with boys at school as his earlier volume with the same title, and once again the boys themselves recite their own adventures from their own standpoint. The astounding history of the " Doctor's Parrot," his conversation, death, and subsequent exhumation at the hands of "Bunny Mathers," will strike any one who knows boys intimately as an extremely truthful revelation. Never- theless, in the matter of humour it hardly comes up to the story of "The Tiger's Tail." Smythe, who heroically hacks it off the mythical beast, will be an attractive figure to every reader. The sequel to a book of great originality is always a little appemhing, because, from the nature of things, it cannot have the merit of originality; but from every other point of view the second set of the adventures of the Human Boy may be pro- nounced to be no falling off from its predecessor. The book is cordially recommended both to the genuine lover of boys, and to the sentimentaliet who creates an imaginary boy whom no real boy ever resembled. The latter reader will learn much from Mr. Phillpotts's pages.