is a rare refreshment in this restricted age. His latest book,
with the stimulating title of _They Went_ (CHAPMAN AND HALL), is an
admirable example of this. Certainly no one else could have created
this exotic city with its painted palaces and copper-encrusted towers,
a vision of sea-mists and rainbows; or peopled it with so iridescent a
company--the strange princess; the queen, her mother; the senile king
who should have been (but wasn't) her father; _Theophilus_, the Greek
artist; the philosophic old Druidess, and the dwarfs who "chanted
squeaky hymns amid sacrifices of mushrooms and gold-dust." Perhaps
this random quotation may hint at the fantastic nature of the tale;
it can give no idea of the intelligence that directs it, mocking,
iconoclastic, almost violently individual. Plot, I fancy, seldom
troubles Mr. DOUGLAS greatly; it happens, or it does not. Meanwhile
he is far more concerned in fitting a double meaning (at least) to the
most simple-sounding phrase. To sum up, _They Went_ is perhaps not
for idle, certainly not for unintelligent, reading; for those who
can appreciate quality in a strange guise it will provide a feast of
unfamiliar flavours that may well create an appetite for more.

* * * * *

That clever writer, Mr. A. P. HERBERT, would lightly describe his
story, _The House by the River_ (METHUEN), as a "shocker." But
there are ways and ways of shocking. He might wish to show us the
embarrassments of a fairly respectable member of the intellectual
classes, living in a highly respectable environment, when he finds
that he has committed homicide; and he might make the details as
gruesome as he liked. But there was no need to shock the sensitive
when he made his choice of the circumstances in which the poet,
_Stephen Byrne_, inadvertently throttles his housemaid. It is a