The Isles of Sunset. By Arthur C. Benson. (Isbister and
Co. Os.) —Mr. Benson has given us a book of parables, and of parables written in very charming and polished prose. But a plaintive note is sounded in every one of the stories, and the effect of the book as a whole is in consequence a little monotonous. It is rather too obvious that in all the stories, besides the one which is actually called "The Isles of Sunset," Mr. Benson is writing of "a land where it is always afternoon," and the reader longs for an occasional breath of the fresh wind which blows at dawn. "Paul the Minstrel" is the most successful of the studies, if only because Mr. Benson has caught so accurately the hardness which lies at the back of the true artistic temperament ; but this is by no means its only merit, for from other points of view it is a very moving and poetic story.
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