BOOKS.
THIS WEEK'S BOOKS.
Tam WEER has not brought quite so many books as did the week that preceded it, but, though the quantity is not so great, there is plenty of reading for the Easter holiday for those who like their books hot from the press and of the most varied sort.
Captain Siltzer's illustrated book on Newmarket (Cassell) is very attractive. There is certainly a peculiar charm about sporting prints, especially about those of the Regency or a little earlier. Captain Siltzer's choice has been excellent. I was particularly charmed by a rather late one-1831—of "The Extraordinary Match of Two-Hundred Miles Against Time by G. Osbaldeston, Esq." Two chestnuts and a grey with heads like greyhounds are fully extended across the foreground, cheered by gentlemen in beaver hats and watched more sedately by ladies in bonnets and crinolines : thundery skies lower on the whole affair—there is very green turf and very yellow tan.
Herr Heinrich Strobel, who was a deputy in the Landtag and a leader writer in Vorwaerts, has written a book on The German Revolution and After, which has now been pub- lished in translation by Messrs. Jarrolds The appearance of the book is particularly timely at this juncture in the Ruhr crisis. It seems a careful, if not an unbiased, study.
Mr. Kenneth MacGowan, who with Mr. Jones wrote the book (recently reviewed in the Spectator) on Continental Stagecraft, has another book out, The Theatre of To-Morrow (T. Fisher Unwin). I believe the close following one on the top of the other of these two books does not mean the feverish over-production which we fear for authors whose work we admire, as The Theatre of To-Morrow has been out for some time in America.
If Mr. J. Y. T. Greig's book on The Psychology of Laughter and Comedy (Allen and Unwin) covers all the ground it sets out to cover it should be fascinating reading. I noticed in passing an amusing chapter on the comic treatment of the vices, wherein the skill with which Shakespeare introduces his "pet thief," Autolycus, is commented on. Thieving, lying, cowardice, hypocrisy, vanity, gluttony and drunkenness are all, with worse vices, Mr. Greig points out, among the pet stock-in-trade of the humorist. Does Mr. Greig deal with that puzzling thing the "Chinese joke," the joke whose joke is that there is no joke ?
Through the Russian Revolution, by Albert Rhys Williams (The Labour Publishing Company), seems to be a Bolshevik propaganda book. All propagandist writing is unsatisfactory, but, nevertheless, this book looks interesting. Calm analysis seems impossible at present, and we have had so much anti- Bolshevik propaganda that, though no English reader is likely to take Through the Russian Revolution without a grain of salt, it is stimulating and interesting. Most of the book seems to be concerned with the Soviet's effort towards popu- larizing the idea of education. There are reproductions of posters representing the illiterate man as blind and under the dominion of the powers of darkness and the educated man as freed and in the sunlight. One brilliantly coloured poster shows a blindfolded man in the Russian peasant dress walking over a precipice.
Lord Ronaldshay's Lands of the Thunderbolt (Constable)— Siklim, Chumbi and Bhutan—seetn.s a fascinating travel book, full of stories of strange- magics, strange beliefs, of oracles robed in gorgeous silks, of lamaseries, of high peaks and monster prayer wheels, of forests and of bare crags, and of the step-back in time which the author took when he entered that mediaeval world. Messrs. Constable have just issued their long expected edition of Herman Melville ; it is in twelve volumes and (except for the covers) is a fine piece of book production.
The week's three most interesting novels are Patuffa, by Beatrice Harraden (Hodder and Stoughton); None-Go-By (which seems to be the story of a cottage so named), by Mrs. Alfred Sidgwiek (Collins); and a new book by Vicente Blasco Ibanez, The Torrent (Fisher Unwin). It is about a prima donna sad Iwo the usual hectic, exciting atmosphere.
Tau LITERARY Emma.
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