SOME BOOKS OF THE WEEK.
[Under this heading we notice such Books of the week as hare not been ',reserved for review in other forms.] Monologues. By Richard Middleton. (T. Fisher nwin. .58. net.)—This is the third collected volume of Richard Middleton's prose writings to be published, and consists of
papers reprinted from various periodicals. Though Middleton always wrote with care and distinction, it is perhaps per- missible to doubt the wisdom of republishing work which is for the most part of an obviously ephemeral nature, and which 'can never receive any revision from its writer. It must be added, however, that Middleton's admirers will find much in these essays that is not unworthy of the author of "The Ghost ,Ship." There is some delightful writing, for instance, in the paper" On Knowing London," which, in the rambling style of an accomplished essayist, discusses "the manner in which the normal, unmethodical Londoner is acquainted with his city." Middleton argues that our impressions are derived _from "certain ecstatic moments" rather than from any continuous process.
"Thus," he goes on, "I have seen an escaped monkey sitting on the head of Robert Burns in the Embankment Gardens ; I have heard a tipsy boy sing so sweetly in a large West End café that _all the women broke down and cried ; I have been roused from my sleep by a policeman to find that a neighbouring fire had cracked my bedroom windows ; I have seen a child blowing soap-bubbles 'in the Strand and Olympia Americans showing off outside a _Bloomsbury hotel ; I have seen Mr. Bernard Shaw going westward with his beard of flax, and I have heard Mr. G. K. Chesterton Llaugh in a quiet street ; I have seen the merchants of London gazing with wild surmise on Mr. Brangwyn's fresco at the Royal Exchange. From these and a thousand other similar moments I have won in some dim way my knowledge of London."
But such sentences as these, gracefully written though they may be, and in spite of their precious and well-polished
air, will scarcely help to prove the depth and originality of Middleton's talent.
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