NOVELS.

THE BELOVED VAGABOND.*

NOVEL-READERS ought always to be grateful to a writer who strikes out a new line, writes fresh variations on an old theme,

or in any way emancipates himself from the thraldom of well- worn formulae. On these general grounds a welcome must be extended to Mr. W. J. Locke, already favourably known as

an ingenious and pleasing writer, for the fantastic and uncon- ventional romance be has put forth under the title of The Beloved Vagabond. It cannot be pronounced a work of pro- found originality, because it bears on every page traces of an attentive study of a multitude of famous exemplars. We are constantly reminded, not only by its temper, but by direct reference, of Rabelais and Cervantes; indeed, the main purpose of the story is to show how far the spirit of mediaeval individualism can be reincarnated in a modern environment. The Lastige Streiche of Till Ealenspiegel, the divagations of the wandering scholars of the Middle Ages, and of Goldsmith with his flute doing the "grand tour" on foot,—all these and other records of

vagabondage, legendary and actual, have influenced Mr. Locke in the conception of his hero, and the picaresque recital of his adventures in the cities and country districts of France, Italy, and Hungary. We are reminded, agreeably and with- out any direct imitation, of Cyrano de Bergerac and Tartarin

de Tarascon ; of the New Arabian Nights and of the romances

of the late Mr. Henry Harland. Yet, while the setting of the story is modern, of modernity in the usual acceptance of the term there is little or nothing in Mr. Locke's pages. We see life in London, but it is not the life of Belgravia or Mayfair, Bayswater or Brixton. It is life as enacted at a Bohemian night club in Soho. The equipment and the luxury of smart

society are conspicuously absent from these pages, or if intro- duced at all, it is only as a foil to the poverty and squalor in

which the principal characters complacently and contentedly exist. It is the same with France, Italy, and Hungary. which we view through the eyes of vagrant musicians or needy art students. There is no railing, however, against the rich, or panegyric of industrious poverty. The life that is chiefly glorified is one of contented vagaboudage, of studious laziness, of irregular hours and imperfect ablutions.

Though this form of narrative naturally suggests the auto- biographical method, Mr. Locke has preferred to let the praises of his hero be sung by his faithful disciple and adopted son, a London guttersnipe whom Paragot, alias Gaston de Nerac, alias Pradel, alias Henkendyke, purchases for half-a- crown from a gin-drinking washerwoman and turns into his body-servant. At the moment when we make his acquaint- ance Paragot is the president of a Soho night club. Dismissed by the proprietor, he returns to his native France, and fiddles

his way from town to town, mostly on foot, playing at marriage fetes and other rustic functions. In the course of his wanderings he adopts a poor country girl, a zither-player left stranded by the death of her patron, and the best part of the book is concerned with the adventures of this strangely assorted trio. Paragot is an amazing mixture,—a braggart, a sot, a wastrel ; yet a scholar steeped in strange lore,

chivalrous and Quixotic, and an artist to the fingertips. The resumption of his relations with a beautiful and high-born lady, affianced to him in his more prosperous days, and now the wife of an objectionable French Count, becomes tediously fantastic, and the breaking-off of their engagement (after the

death of the Count) conveniently paves the way for Paragot's culminating act of Quixotry,—his marriage with the unlovely but excellent zither-player.

Mr. Locke has a pretty wit, an ingenious invention, and a graceful style—the numerous misprints by which his pages

are disfigured are, we take it, to be laid at the door of the printer, not the writer—and on the whole must be con- gratulated on the skill, the spirit, and the tact with which be has composed these exotic variations on a Rabelaisian theme. His hero is an engaging rogue who might well take for his

• The Beloved Vagabond, By W. J. Locke, London: John Lane. De.] motto the line, Deus sit propitius huic potatori ; but we could wish that Mr. Locke had been less at pains to insist on the grubbiness of the life of vagabondage described in these pages. The consumption of fluid is enormous, but it is almost exclusively devoted to the quenching of thirst.