Man. By Lilian Quiller Couch. "Odd Volumes," No. 5. (J.
M. Dent and Co.)—The above comprehensive title does not prelude an essay on " Man : his Origin and Development," but merely a volume of clever short stories by a young lady whom we believe to be nearly related to the author of "Troy Town." Miss QuMer Couch has certainly the faculty of serving up the rather stale materials of which the modern short story is composed in a somewhat original and pleasant sauce, but it is a great pity that she should descend to the trick of calling each of her heroes in succession "the man," more especially as the essential plan of her book need not have been altered if she had taken a less conven- tional course. For the unconventionality of the modern literary artifice has by this time become the dreariest of conventions, and we long for some one who will amuse and interest us "in the fearless old fashion." We find it very difficult to forgive the authoress for the beginning of the best story in the book, "The man was a man," which reminds us irresistibly of "Patience." "He was a little boy." "He was a little boy." Heralded by this inauspicious sentence, the authoress gives us, under the title,. " The Courage of a Man," a very able analysis of the feelings of a morally brave and physically cowardly man in the course of his first battle. But the solemn pronouncement of the Colonel in the last paragraph is not nearly so pithy as the real remark of a Colonel to his subaltern in action :—" If you were in such a beastly funk as I am, you'd run away." As a whole, the stories, however, have the quality of being readable, and if the authoress could acquire in some degree the great art of concealing her art, and writing simply, we feel sure that she might give us a book which would be quite as amusing as, and very much less irritating than, the little volume before us.
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