Sorrelsykes. By Harold Armitage. (Wheeler and Co. 6s.) —It is
long since we have come across a book which repro- duces, as exactly as does Mr. Armitage's, the actual tricks of memory; and this close resemblance is at once its strength and its weakness. Here, instead of tedious efforts at por- traiture, or at the describing of scenes of which the writer can have bad no personal experience, are stories handed down by the village folk of Sorrelsykes, little strange scenes and scraps of history snatched from oblivion ;—just the sort of inconsequent occurrences which outlive in the memory more important matters. But now we are face to face with the failure; for, however admirable be the wish to preserve some of the fast-vanishing traditions of English village life, the horrible doubtassails us, after the first few chapters, that most of Mr. Armitage's book ie hopelessly trivial; that Harry Jarvis and Matthew Higgins and the many others wholived in Sorrel- sykes were but workaday folk after all, with a mother-wit much like that of ordinary men ; that, in abort, their sayings and doings scarcely deserved to be handed down to posterity. We must, however, make an exception in favour of one frequenter of the 'Spangled Bull,' a certain "Johnny Deakin, who had a wry neck. Once, when Johnny had been driving through Derbyshire, he was thrown from a trap, and some men, finding him upon the roadside, endeavoured to straighten him, and persisted for some time in their efforts, notwith- standing Johnny's continued murmuring of 'Kw wor born soma! Aw wor born soma!"' Here, at all events, is an 'unconscious humour well worthy of preservation.
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