The thing
is well and delicately done, with a reserve that may encourage the
judicious to hope for good work in the future from a pen that is (I
fancy) as yet somewhat new. On the other hand, I must confess that the
Gaiety left me (though this, of course, may be an isolated experience)
with sides unshaken. "Callisthenes at Cambridge," for example, is but
little removed from the article that, to my certain knowledge, has
padded school and 'Varsity magazines since such began to be. Still, I
liked the plea for Protection against foreign imports in literature
and art by way of helping the native producer, though even here some
condensation would, I thought, have sharpened the point. But, after
all, reviewers are dull dogs to move to laughter (as no doubt Mr.
OSBORN will now agree), so I hope he will rest content with my
genuine appreciation of his graver passages, and will be encouraged
to give us something more ambitious and less open to the suspicion
of book-making.
* * * * *
The _Letters of a Soldier: 1914-1915_ (CONSTABLE) are letters to
a mother; letters also of an artist, and full of an exquisite
sensibility, a fine candour. I can best give you an impression of the
charming personality of this young French soldier (who survived his
first great battle, to be reported missing after the counter-attack,
since when no news of him has reached his friends), by quoting little
sentences of his, and if you don't want to know more of him after
reading them then nothing I can say will be of any use: "The true
death would be to live in a conquered country, above all for me, whose
art would perish.
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