16 JANUARY 1915, Page 24

Sir James Yoxall tells us that the agreeable volume which

he calls .4 Villa for Conch, (Smith, Elder, and Co., Os. net) was intended " to bind up and transmit to the indifference of posterity" papers which he bad contributed to various periodicals. But in the course of assembling these materials he devised an " elderly bookman" whose personality was to serve as a connecting link, and who, taking the pen out of his creator's hands, has turned a collection of fugitive episodes into "something which rather resembles a criticism and a philosophy of life." This bookman is a friendly though ironical fellow, and many readers will like him.