The 'nineties of the Yellow Book have become strangely far
and remote, although they have left so easily traceable an influence behind them, and Mr. Bernard Muddiman (The Men of the Nineties, Henry Danielson, 6s. net) has written in the spirit of research. The whole feverish affair was of course imported from Paris. There was a curious lack of assimilation of the movement in England, and English "decadence" had an extraneousness almost comparable to the false nose of Pantaloon. But for the war and the Russian Revolution we should probably have had the same experience with Russian literature. Now let us hope the Russian leaven will work slowly and really raise the loaf. We in. England can produce vigorous work when we are set in motion by a foreign school, but uncritical reproduction like that of the 'nineties ends in a blind alley.
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