THE RICHEST MAN. By Edward Shanks. (Collins. 7s. 64 When
literary men of sober standing set out to write " shockers," one of two things may happen—they may suceced. or they may fail. If they think, they are almost bound to fail ; because no man can think with any mind but his own; and if they have the sort of mind which can think a " shocker "! they will not have the sort of mind which makes a sober: literary man. All the ingredients will be there—all the, battles, murders and sudden deaths, the births and burials— but the spirit of divine folly, the sort of necessary gifted idiocy which adds noughts to the sales in triplets, will not be there.' There will be for the frankly low-brow reader a certain tinge of what to him cannot but appear dullness ; and where the' same theme in less able hands would have found its way into every railway carriage in the country, it will not get far beyond being the sort of book which high-brow readers will think fitting to send as a birthday present to a young nephew' or niece. All this sounds a little hard on Mr. Shanks. He has done his very best to entertain its, and indeed, the present writer was entertained—up to a point. But he would have been more entertained if either Mr. Shanks had written in a more serious way, or if the book had been written by some less serious person than its author. The present writer can enjoy low-brow literature with the best of them ; it is only the imitation low-brow which he finds sticks ever so slightly in his throat.
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