Cupid's Caterers. By Ward Muir. (Stanley Paul and Co. 6s.)—Of
course, none of the characters of Mr. Muir's hook are real people at all, he never meant them to be. If they had been true to life, we might have concentrated our attention on Wilson's love affairs and Murdoch's desperate efforts to earn a couple of pounds a week, whereas all that the writer needed was a set of puppets on which to hang his scathing criticisms of that class of feminine weekly journal which appeals chiefly to " shopgirls and slaveys." In his novel, which deals with the production of a paper rejoicing in the name of Honey. suckle, Mr. Muir certainly seem to write from personal experience of such work ; we must, however, take exception to his profound pessimism concerning journalism and journalists, for to say that "it is not the reader of trash who is harmed— the reader who knows no better—the reader whose mind is so starved that even by the poorest meat and drink it is fed and nourished : not be, but the writer and producer. These are killed, body and soul "—is to fall into the snare of exaggera- tion. But it is a thankless task to praise Mr. Muir's work, and an idle one to criticize it; his opinion of our medium is evidently as low as of our profession, since be assures us that "in its way a Spectator article is not more diffioult than a Honeysuckle one."
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