Miscellanies
HERE are the miscellanies. The Sapphire Treasury (Gollancz, 15s.) reveals a markedly personal taste. The bulk of the book is Made up of Collodi's 'Pinocchio' and The Stokesley Secret,' by Charlotte M. Yonge—a fair sample of its sweet-and-sour blend. Add to them some vintage Lear, Stevenson's 'The Bottle Imp,' a Verne and a Mrs. Ewing, with three Indian folk tales thrown in, and you can judge what a remarkable range of material has been moulded into a book. A Story Book for Boys and Girls (Everyman, 9s. 6d.) is a collection by the well- practised Guy Pocock. This is for the academic- in-embryo, a bit of a sobersides, who can only be satisfied with the best names. And what names they are! Carlyle and Malory, Spenser and Boccaccio, Herodotus (Rawlinson's version, of course) and fEsop—the line stretches on and on, right down to de la Mare, and Kipling, and Quiller-Couch—and even the nonagenarian Eden Phillpotts. The effect is worthy, a little un- inspiring in appearance, but tremendous money's worth for the determined young reader. To the Land of Fair Delight (Gollancz, 15s.) allows Noel Streatfeild to introduce three Vic- torian tales of the imagination. Here's another real 'character' of a book, and it was a publisher's stroke of genius to bring it together. Jean Ingelow's poetical `Mopsa the Fairy' is a charmer, but with a small, precise, Victorian foot firmly on the ground. G. E. Farrow's 'The Little Panjan- drum's Dodo,' which is a riotous adventure, with animals and children on equal terms, owing something to Carroll but with a strong foretaste of Dr. Doolittle and the moderns. And finally `At the Back of the North Wind,' George MacDonald's tear-jerker: those who like it al- ready will like it again. Experience of an occa- sional chapter as bedtime reading cannot persuade me that this has anything desirable to give to the child today; but some of my friends swear by it.
RICHARD JAY
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