The Captain of His Soul. By Henry James Forman. (Grant
Richards. 6s.)—When Gilbert Spottswood, not far from starvation, and unable to satisfy his ambition for journalistic work, lived in a slum in New York, his German landlord committed suicide, whereupon Gilbert, with a good deal of new-found sentiment for the drunken German, declined to make a " scoop " of his own, and told a reporter all about it in a friendly way. Now, we frankly own that we find it difficult to sympathize with those who will not help themselves, and this lack of initiative is fairly typical of the very small soul that Gilbert captained. Mr. Forman is sincerity itself, and writes genuinely of genuine emotions, but he is lacking either in imagination or in the power to enlist our sympathy. We are told of the heroine's sparkling charm, and we believe in it because Mr. Forman evidently knows her more intimately than we do; at the descriptions of the hero's most impassioned moments we are inclined to smile politely. Yet it may well be that this rather uninspired account of the development, through success and trouble and women's influence, of the personality of an average young man is truer to human nature, and consequently of greater value, than many more romantic adventures in psychology.
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