... . EVEN fifty years ago Donizetti s Lucia en must have been an indigestible morsel to admirers of The Wizard of the North, for if there ever has been a direct opposite to the superficial puerilities of the operatic hero, it is the stern and direct Master of Ravens wood, whose striking figure arrests the imagination of all who can think of anything but music. What a deal of swallowing, ...

... . MR. EDGAR PEMBERTON, who is the author of several dramatic biographies, is responsible for the present volume --and for its title, which, like the pictures in the book, gives more prominence to the popular Lyceum actress than to the other talented ladies, her sisters. On our part we are, as far as our illustrations are concerned, compelled, with some re gret, to follow the example of the ...

... . A. B. C. of Housekeeping. By Mrs. J. N. Bell. (Henry J. Drane, l8-) A. B. C. of Cookery for Invalids. By Mrs. John Kiddle. (Henry J. Drane, Is.) Forty Fancies and Seven Songs. By Amelia M. Barker. (Henry J. Drane, Is.) The White Prince of the Stolen Roses. By Kate Stanway. (Henry J. Drane, 3s. Gd.) In the Great White Land. By Gordon Stables, R.N. (Blaokie and Son, Ltd., 3s. 6d.) The ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE BEST OF FRIENDS. NO play has ever been better mounted, and few, if any, have been done as well as The Best of Friends at Drury Lane. The college scenes at Oxford, the banquet of yeo manry at Riverlea, the noble ducal residence, the military incidents at Johannesburg, the surprise-- with explosives-- at de Lahne's Farm, and finally the grand sensation in the circus, ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE EMPTHE THEATRE I do not know whether the sunshine was disappointed at the postponement of the Coronation, but it seems to be one of the distinguished --I mean occasionally distinguished- visitors who have left us, without arranging anything de finite for the future. Not so the Americans; apparently, they have remained pretty nearly in full force, and should they be ...

... By Thomas Cobb. (Chapman and Hall. 6s.) New book though it is, Mr. Thomas Cobb's latest volume is not likely to cause that besieging of the circulating libraries by literary dowagers and their grand-daughters of which Hazlitt writes so bitterly in one of his most caustic essays. However important such commonplace love-affairs as those dealt with by Mr. Cobb may be to the participants, they are ...

... THE BOOK AND ITS AUTHOR. THE REIGN OF QUEEN ANNE. IN two handsome volumes Mr. Justin McCarthy presents as with a series of pictures, sometimes brilliant and always interesting, of what is generally termed the Augustan Age of English History. The Reign of Queen Anne (Chatto and Windus) is no dry-as-dust historical compilation, full of minute but arid detail conscientiously laboured, neither ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THREE LITTLE MAIDS. THEY are doing a roaring business at the Apollo Theatre, and Three Little Maids is a pre-eminently moral title-- who, then, shall ever again tell us that either managers or their public run after wickedness? It is always un gracious to find fault where success achieved is already superior to criticism; and, indeed, if personally I was not greatly ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE ETERNAL CITY. MR. HALL CAINE has ''cast the action'' of The Eternal City into the future, ''to show that no personal reference was intended. I should have preferred, after sitting the performance out, that besides the plot's having been ''cast into the future, the production also might have been written for posterity. Posterity will have had time to for get-- not Mr ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE CRAZE FOE IMITATION. CHANCELLORS of the Exchequer are often hard pressed for new sources of revenue-- why do they never think of taxing Imitation? There is nothing else which has so great a part in our modern life; there is nothing, besides, which the world would find it harder to do without. We have had the stone age, the bronze age, the golden age, and what not-- we ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. THE UNFORESEEN. THERE is nothing in a name, and The Unforeseen is not in arbitrary one. The piece might, perhaps, more ap propriately have been entitled, Lying for the Sake of the Thing or Pertinacious Perversity: or, perhaps, Sheer Stupidity would be more to the point? It is kinder to think only that the heroine as a stage figure, behaves extremely foolishly--no personal ...

... OUR CAPTIOUS CRITIC. MADEMOISELLE MARS. Nell Gwynne, Iris, Kitty Grey, Mdlle. Mars--there is quite a run upon heroines who are no better than they should be. I suppose that authors and the public also--perhaps the public before the authors--will get tired of this some day, and that then as of old we may, occasionally at least, come across a play of a good woman. There is no doubt, of course, ...