most

This is without doubt, the spiritual of Mr. Machen's works. In a way it marks a new departure from the fascinating word pictures and hermetic tales that have made the author what he is today. It proposes a theme rather old and hackneyed and worn and yet dignified and worthy through its long service. From the title alone, as well as its first few paragraphs, one senses it at once-the conflict between some form of idealism and the base materialism that immediately surrounds it.

One feels that the work is largely autobiographical. The detail is far too engrossed to be otherwise. The absence of plot to make room for the maximum amount of invectives against the public school, a sore subject of the author,

and the infinite care he takes in describing the "heavy" characters shows something more than the usual anecdotal feeling of a story-writer. It is a kind of work like "Die Meistersinger" or "Les Contes Drolatiques," a ferment, long brewing in the mind, but held in check until the writer is powerful enough to produce it.

The entire book is laid in a model English school, Lupton by name, and the chief characters, beside the youth, Ambrose Meyrick, are the masters, two or three students of the Stalky order and a thoughtful girl of the serving class. There is little or no dialogue, the bulk of the arguments taking place in the turbulent mind of Ambrose. No effort is made to keep the history of the youth in a chronological order. Conclusively, this work is an essay, not a story.

But charming as this work may be to some, it has several discouraging points. Mr. Machen is so obvious. Not satisfied with having his unpleasant characters damned by the reader, he needs must also mete them out some deserving punishment in the end. The High Usher, the most villainous person in the treatment, suffers ignominious shame and dies from it, one of the students, after a vainglorious career makes a most stupid step and also dies thereby, a school favorite, prophesied a scholar. turns out a writer of cheap fiction

Nor does Ambrose escape this overflow of sensation. After suffering in the best of figurative fashion, he is literally pounced upon while in darkest Asia and crucified in Christ-like manner. It is rather disconcerting. One feels for Ambrose because he is the reflection of one's own self in a casual

phase. All, or nearly all, of us feel that we underwent the same mental anguish and misunderstanding, while in school. But very few of us expect to be crucified by a wandering band of Kurds in the great Kevir.

However, certain scenes in the book, far outweigh any tawdriness one might find elsewhere. The pilgrimage of Ambrose and his father to worship the Holy Cup of Teilo Sant. The story of Ilar Sant and the vision of Ambrose when he looks upon the Secret Glory. These excerpts are the true Machen, untarnished by prejudice or efforts at

reason.

Again the author treats the Celtic Church, that beautiful amalgamation of Pagan color and beauty and Christian ideals, with veneration that is admirable. He writes of it, not as an academician, but as Malory, as Keats, as Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote about it and Wagner (his intentions were good) wrote for it. At the end of some of the scenes one breathes "Curiluson" with as much fervor as did Bors or Perceval at the House of Souls. Mr. Machen writes of the Sangrael with authority and with genuine awe at the same time. He tries to find no "key" to a religious schism in the story nor a foundation for the Episcopal church in its treatment. In a day and age of religious surgeons, it is good to find a votary.

At any rate, it awakens or revives an interest in the Grail legends and the hagiological folk lore of Little Britain. What images are called up of youthful devotion to ideals when the words "Ffrynnon llar Bysgootwr" are mentioned! What a remembrance of

the Mabinogion comes when one reads the song of the bell:

Sant, sant, sant, I sail from Syon To Cybi Sant!

It is indeed refreshing to find one who economic still believes, despite the necessities of life, in such exquisite, unpractical and unreasonable things as the Celtic church and its accoutrements.

JOHN HICKS MONTGOMERY.

PRELUDES AND SYMPHONIES

BY JOHN GOULD FLETCHER.

(Houghton Mifflin 1922)

radiations, Sand and Spray" and T is a pleasure to report that "IrI "Goblins and Pagodas", which first introduced Mr. Fletcher as a poet to be admired, have been reissued in one volume. Coming on the heels of the little volumes that Mr. Fletcher issued in 1913 in London before he had found himself, these poems in Poetry, the Little Review and The Egoist, were a delightful surprise to many of us. I shall remember for a long while opening a magazine at random in 1914 and seeing these lines:

Over the roof-tops race the shadows of clouds;

Like horses the shadows of clouds charge down the street.

This was at a time when I thought John Gould Fletcher wrote jingles. A few lines lower I saw:

Amid the vermilion pavilions, against the jade balustrades.

I have had a healthy respect for Mr. Fletcher since that date. Though I am not sure that he has attained ultimate precision in his very individual style, I