be so, we see at once the value of criticisms like those which M. André Chevrillon has included in the book in its English form entitled Three Studies in English Literature. For M. Chevrillon is a very distinguished student of English literature, and what he tells us is animated not only by his sympathetic appreciation, but also by his knowledge, of the novels of our country

men.

For Rudyard Kipling he has long since entertained a profound admiration, and in the present volume he gives us at considerable length a close and penetrating discussion of the poet's career and the various changes of style which have accompanied his development. Galsworthy comes next, an author whom the average French critic might find a little dry and formal and perhaps devoid of eloquence and passion. But Galsworthy has found a rare commentator in M. André Chevrillon, who knows the Forsyte Saga in an intimate fashion and understands the peculiarities and prejudices of the English upper middle class.

There remains a chapter on Shakespeare, written some time ago on the occasion of the Shakespeare tercentenary, April, 1916. M. Chevrillon has something novel and fresh to say even on a theme which lends itself so easily to rhetoric, and his analysis of the 'English soul,' or rather of the different souls to be discovered in England, is one which it is profitable for us to consider.

Memories of a Hostess, by M. A. DeWolfe Howe. London: Fisher Unwin, 1923. Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922.

[S. K. Ratcliffe in the Manchester Guardian]

THE hostess in question is the wife of James T. Fields, publisher, of Boston, friend of nearly all American authors in his time and of the various important Englishmen who found their way to the United States during the middle years of the last century. The house in Charles Street was a complete shrine of literary New England, and Mrs. Fields preserved its tradition till her death in 1915. She was a copious diarist, recording the doings of the famous literary society which surrounded Longfellow and Oliver Wendell Holmes. They were far too much given to mutual admiration, Lowell alone, it would seem, behaving occasionally as rebel and satirist.

Greatest and most fascinating of all European visitors, during Mrs. Fields's long reign of seventy years, was Charles Dickens, who made his triumphant reading-tour in 1868. Mrs. Fields was entirely absorbed by him. Dickens delighted his Boston friends by mimicking Carlyle and other eminent contemporaries; and now and again he took the liberty of pulling their legs, as when he announced that Browning was to marry Jean Ingelow. Perhaps the most interesting glimpses of American writers are those of Hawthorne and Mark Twain. The latter, amid his New England surroundings, is described by Mrs. Fields in such a way as to suggest that Mr. Van Wyck Brooks's recent analysis of Mark Twain as a frustrate genius might be supported by good Boston testimony.

[Punch]

THE claim that Memories of a Hostess is ‘not only a chronicle of notable friendships but a life story of one of the most distinguished and charming hostesses of the day' is a just one. For scores of years during last century the Fields house at Boston was a centre of hospitality and social activity, and it is from the diaries of Mrs. James T. Fields that Mr. M. A. De Wolfe Howe has drawn the material for this volume. The work of selection has been done with an excellent discretion and an unusual economy in the admission of trivial gossip. Men of mark — Hawthorne, Emerson, Longfellow, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Lowell, and Charles Dickens, among others move intimately through these pages as honored guests and friends of Mr. and Mrs. James Fields. Dignity is the note of these Memories, which are concerned with real friends and not with casual acquaintances.

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BOOKS MENTIONED

BAKER, RAY STANNARD. Woodrow Wilson and World Settlement: Written from his Unpub lished and Personal Material. Garden City, N. Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co. 3 vols. 1922. $20.

TOLLER, ERNST. The Machine-Wreckers. English version by Ashley Dukes. London: Benn Brothers, 1923.

Georgian Poetry, 1920-1922. London: The Poetry Bookshop, 1922. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1923.