DESERT, 4 . LEGEND. „ By Martin Armstrong : (Cape. 7s. 6d.)—Mr.
Armstrong relates in alniost conscientiously detailed manner the experience of a young Alexandrian sybarite who,. recoiling from hedonism after an unfortunately terminated-love affair, -determines to follow the way of the Early Christian hermits. He sets himself to the long task of attaining freedom from the world's illusions by solitude, fasting and toil. It is perhaps not Mr. Armstrong's fault, for he writes scrupulously well and deliberately, if the temptations of the mind that assail Malehus do not exactly appal. The horror that walks by night has lost its fears for an age that babbles glibly in psycho-analytic phraseology : and in any case the temptations of the flesh which befall Malchus are so much more concretely described, or suggested, than are those of the spirit that one cannot but compare the book rather unfavourably to La Tentation de St. Antoine. Mr. Armstrong lacks the biting pen : he is too good-natured to his poor hermit, and there is at once more horror and more voluptuousness in the woodcuts by B. Ravilions, which hand- somely decorate the novel, than m the letterpress.
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