The Comedy of Age. By Desmond Coke. (Chapman and Hall.
6s.)—Very few authors after writing a successful story of school life can resist the temptation to carry the process one step farther. The results of these attempts are too well known and too disastrous to need any comment of ours. The only really successful story of undergraduate life—the burlesque chronicle of "Mr. Verdant Green "—is the exception that proves the rule, for Cuthbert Bede never wrote a school-story, to say nothing of the fact that he was never a member of the University of Oxford. Mr. Degmond Coke, the author of that exhilarating volume, "The Bending of a Twig," has profited from the experience of his fore- runners. Undergraduates play an important part in his story, but the central figure is an elderly don, a scholar and a recluse. Radford, after nearly forty years of cloistered seclusion, is stung by the good-humoured criticism of an old friend—a man of the world—into trying to make friends with the undergraduates of his College. These chapters recount the result of Mr. Radford's belated experiment, the special object of his overtures being an engaging young Philistine whose attitude passes gradually from con- teinptuous annoyance to a tempered gratitude. The sympathies of the reader throughout are enlisted on the side of the elder man, and the situation is handled with humour as well as good feeling. The book is, perhaps, misnamed a comedy ; a tragi- comedy would be nearer the mark. But the conclusion shows that, after all, both parties have gained from the experiment; in a word, that it is never too late for an old man to endeavour to understand the younger generation.
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