... '. By E. F. Benson. Heineviann 6s.) The sensitive critic approaches Mr. Benson's new book with a certain amount of diffidence. Up to the end of April, he has been charmed, amused, convinced. With the advent of May, however, there comes to him a sneaking suspicion that the author, after all, is merely spinning a yarn instead of adhering to his purpose of setting down the impressions of a year ...

... . By C. Ranger Gull. {Greening. 6s.) Air. Ranger Gtdl has yet to find his level At one time an ardent disciple in the school of Oscar Wilde, he has disported himself under the flags of various modern writers until, with His Grace's Grace, we find him striking an unhappy medium between Mr. Cotsford Dick and Miss Braddon. In other words, he is at one time ultra-epigrammatic, and at another ...

... . By Fred. Whishaw. {Chatto and Windus. 6s.) Under an unnecessarily melodramatic title, Mr. Fred. Whishaw tells the oft-told storv of the tragedy that forms the greatest blot upon the escutcheon of Peter, Emperor of All the Russias, called the Great, the notorious clearing of the horizon by the murder of the weakling Tsarevitch. In his book we see Peter the great barbarian rather than the ...

... . By Cyrus Townsend Brady. Putnam 6s.) Those chapters dealing strictly with the business side of this novel the making and the breaking of the corner are quite excellent, but apres cela (et avant) Ie deluge. With the exception of Elijah D. Tillottson and his rare old partner, Colonel Pinckney Tolliver Johnstone, a Southern gentleman, the characterisation is poor, and even the heroine, ...

... . By Albert Kinross. Constable 6s.) The story that Mr. Kinross has to tell is simple enough. A Colossus of the newspaper world, one Bartol, whose interest in his particular group of newspapers is worth three hundred thousand pounds to the Chief Shareholder, suddenly decides to sell out and go in search of a Certain Lady. In other words, he determines to abandon sensation for sentimentality. ...

... 44 THE TRAITORS. By E. Phillips Oppenheim. (Ward, Lock. 6s.) The audacity of Mr. Phillips Oppenheim in undertaking to write the history of yet another imaginary State in Eastern Europe is equalled only by the plausibility with which he has performed his task. In Theos there flourishes a less deft form of epigram than in Ruritania, but there is quite as much adventure of the headlong kind. Mr. ...

... * NO ATTEMPT, plead the brothers Maude in their modest preface, has been made to write a serious history, and we have only tried to deal with those periods of the theatre's life that are, in our opinion, interesting and entertaining. The volume, without a doubt, is full of interesting matter and entertaining stories, but the scheme of the book is so sound that it would be hardly possible, ...

... . By Arnold Bennett. {Chat to and JVt'tidus. dr.) Mr. Arnold Bennett's latest novel is like and yet unlike its immediate predecessor the scene is the same, the general atmosphere the same, several of the minor characters the same but the patient, submissive Anna is replaced by the more emotional Leonora, a romancist of forty, fretting under the pettiness of life in the Potteries, impatient of ...

... By J. M. Barrie. (Hodder and Slough/on. 6s.) It is fairly safe to predict that ninety-nine per cent, of Mr. Barrie's admirers who take up this book expecting to find a Barrie novel will be bitterly disappointed. For the book is not a novel indeed, it is hard to classify, but one may set it down as an elaborate prose-poem of child life. Nor will anyone be able to say off-hand whether the gifted ...

... . By John Oliver Hobbes. This volume is made up of three etnrioe on il Fisher Unwin. -?.v. M.) two short plays. One of the plays, The Repentance, will be remembered as having been performed not long ago at the St. James's Theatre. In a prefatory note, the author rather goes out of her way to tell the reader that, although the public did not understand the little piece,- the critics liked it ...

... . By G. K. Chesterton. The curious recklessness displayed by modern writers ior me rress in reprinting tneir Innritn-a n -f l y* 1 /Yn r- r\ TY r, mrvvrt Q\*arrtr,Mriori a TY (Humphreys. }s. 6d.) a,UUM Jn iilc cAwiipiiiicu in Mr. Chesterton's book of essays. It carries with it its own Nemesis. For in Twelve Types the articles on Charlotte Bronte, William Morris, The Optimism of Byron, ...

... . THE biography of William Black by Sir Wemyss Reid promises to be a very entertaining book. It turns out that a mass of Black's correspondence has been preserved. I hope Sir Wemyss Reid will tell us something of Black's career as an editor. He was for some time in charge of the Examiner, and he also took up the London Review, which was started by the late Dr. Charles Mackay. There never was a ...