toleration, and his own doings with a smile of honest amusement, and
Heaven with a smile which is not distrustful--being thoroughly persuaded
that God is kindlier than the genteel would regard as rational." These
are the accents, set to slightly different rhythms, of a Congreve; and
if there is anything as remarkable about Mr. Cabell as the fact that he
has represented the chivalrous and the gallant attitudes toward love
with nearly equal sympathy, it is the fact that in an era of militant
naturalism and of renascent moralism he has blithely adhered to an
affection for unconcerned worldliness and has airily played Congreve in
the midst of all the clamorous, serious, disquisitive bassoons of the
national orchestra.

In _The Cords of Vanity_ Robert Townsend goes gathering roses and
tasting lips almost as if the second Charles were still the lawful ruler
of his obedient province of Virginia; and in _The Rivet in Grandfather's
Neck_ Rudolph Musgrave, that quaint figure whittled out of chivalry and
dressed up in amiable heroics, is plainly contrasted with the glib rogue
of genius John Charteris, who, elsewhere in Mr. Cabell's books generally
the chorus, here enters the plot and exhibits a sorry gallantry in
action. Poictesme, these novels indicate, is not the only country Mr.
Cabell knows; he knows also how to feel at home, when he cares to, in
the mimic universe of Lichfield and Fairhaven, where gay ribbons
perpetually flutter, and where eyes and hands perpetually invite, and
where love runs a deft, dainty, fickle course in all weathers.

That Felix Kennaston inhabits Lichfield in the flesh and in the spirit
elopes into Poictesme may be taken, after a fashion, as allegory with an
autobiographical foundation: _The Cream of the Jest_ is, on the whole,
the essence of Cabell. The book suggests, moreover, a critical
position--which is, that gallantry and Virginia have so far been