The Pillow - Book : a Garner of Many Moods. Collected by
N. G. Royde-Smith. (Methuen and Co. 4s. 6d. net.)—Miss Royde- Smith divides mankind into two classes, "those who put out the light before getting into bed, and those who get into bed before putting out the light." And she dedicates her book to the latter. These will, we hope, be grateful. Still, the present writer ventures, on the strength of a very considerable experience, to suggest that the bed-book should not be used in the way that is thus proposcd. After all, one goes to bed to sleep, and to begin to read at once is surely bad policy, and the better the book, the worse the policy. Lose, we should say, no chance of sleep, but when the wakeful time comes, as come it must to most who are not of the Dogberry type, then turn to the book. The Pillow Book is worthy to be put with established volumes of the kind, Horace, for instance, and the Greek Anthology (in some selection). There are between three and four hundred passages, poetry and prose, gathered. from far and wide, and gathered with discrimination.
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