MISTRESS E. R SOF. Eddison
ddisonISTRESSES
Mr. E. R. Eddison needs a large canvas to work upon. In Mistress of Mistresses (Faber and Faber, 10s. ad.) he employs one almost as large as in his masterpiece, The Worm Ouroboros, and again creates a new world for his imagination to people. Zimiamvia is a Renaissance world, in which beauty and brutality, noble ambition and luxurious dalliance, can exist in a natural harmony ; and, in his twin heroes, Lessingham, the soldier and diplomat, and Barganax, Duke of Zayana, the artist and visionary, Mr. Eddison has embodied an ideal which belongs to the sixteenth century rather than to the twentieth. But this is not the ordinary " period " novel. Mr. Eddison plunders the treasures of many civilizations and many literatures to enrich these realms of his creation. His narrative prose is more gorgeous, and his dialogue more packed with h expression, than those of any other living writer ; and his story moves from climax to climax of excitement with a confidence which never falters. The character-drawing is snore subtle than in his previous novels, and is not restricted to 'the major figures of the story. The fatal vacillations of the High Admiral, and the fidelity of Gabriel Flores to his diabolical master, are excellently depicted. Mistress of Mistresses—the title comes from Baudelaire's eulogy of the goddess Aphrodite, who is the controlling genius of Lessingham's destiny—is not so perfectly rounded a tale as The Worm Ourohoros, and the action is sometimes slow, but it is none the less an unusual and fascinating book, impres- sive alike in conception and in execution.
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