back for possible enlightenment, and found a note to the effect that
it was a transcription of an Icelandic saga. Those old fellows knew
their business. I am not sagacious enough to guess where Mr. MAURICE
HEWLETT has passed beyond transcription to creation, but I can tell
you that he offers his readers a very charming and finished piece of
work. Boys of all ages should delight in this record of the fights and
wanderings and stout diplomacy of the chieftain _Thorgills_, who was
destined from his cradle to be a notable leader of men. His marriage
with _Thorey_ was a romance of as exquisite a flavour as any that our
sophisticated age can show, and its tragic end wrings the heart with
its infinite pathos. By some singular discretion Mr. HEWLETT has
chosen to eschew the least approach to Wardour-Street idiom, and
this gives the narrative a simplicity, a sanity and a vivid sense of
reality which are extraordinarily more effective than the goodliest
tushery, of which flamboyant art Mr. HEWLETT is no mean master. I
am sure he has chosen this time a more excellent way. There are
transcriptions and transcriptions. This is brilliantly done.

* * * * *

I cannot help regretting that Miss RHODA BROUGHTON has not thought fit
to publish her total fictional tonnage (if without disrespect I may
employ a metaphor of the moment) on the title-page of her latest
volume. Certainly the tale of her output must by this time reach
impressive dimensions. And the wonder is that _A Thorn in the Flesh_
(STANLEY PAUL) betrays absolutely no evidence of staleness. If the
outlook here is a thought less romantic than in certain novels that
drew sighs from my adolescent breast, this is a change inherent in
the theme. For the matter of the present work is a study in conjugal
tedium. _Parthenope_ (name of ill-omen) was one of those unhappy and