ture he has no gospel to preach, no point of view to present he merely strives to entertain... and that he is the most diverting prestidigitator and mirthprovoking showman of our age Poor Relations convincingly proves.

Unfortunately, we don't expect Lord George Sangers to be artists. Compton Mackenzie is an artist to the finger-tips, and he has therefore been persistently misunderstood. Disappointment lies in store for those befogged critics who think that Compton Mackenzie is of the family of Hugh Walpole, J. D. Beresford, or Gilbert Cannan.

Is it after all a limitation not to belong to the introspective school? The riddle of the universe is not necessarily to be solved by the novelist. . . . Is it a crime to revert to the tradition of Tom Jones? Mackenzie is in the direct line of Fielding. Is not that enough? Why complain that he falls short of an achievement which he never set out to attain ?

So much for limitations. What has this wayward genius, then, to offer if he has no gospel, and can't paint an endurable well-bred man? In the first place, he is a consummate architect. Young modern novelists for the most part are so taken up with analysing their emotions, and sifting their psychological experiences, that they have eliminated form and technique altogether. They rather pride themselves on their lawlessness. Mackenzie plans on a colossal scale, but rarely makes a mistake: his edifice is not only beautiful (few living writers have quite such a feeling for the best word: his sentences are exquisitely balanced, pellucidly clear, and rhythmical), but it is utilitarian. He has great inventive powers; he is always deeply stirred by beautiful things, and can convey the essence of an impression

more economically and surely than most of his contemporaries.

Guy and Pauline is so beautiful that we are almost drugged by the sweetness of it. Every season of the year, every flower, and every changing light is seized and put on to paper perfectly. When he sets out deliberately to paint a landscape, whether it be of a Cotswold village with its cobbles overgrown with grass, of Cornwall in December with its blue and purple veronicas and almond-scented gorse, or Anasirene with its anemones splashed out like wine upon the green corn, and red-beaded cherry-trees throwing shadows on the tawny wheat, we sit dumb as before a picture by a great master.

It is the presence of beauty that never fails to show Mackenzie at his best. He is one of Nature's great interpreters and I am not sure that he is not woman's best interpreter. Jenny is not the only pearl to be cast before swine. Pauline, Sylvia, each in her own individual way, is equally precious and adorable.

We have seen two of the inimitable trio giving up their boundless maiden treasures, in each case to a puppet-and in each case so deftly and delicately has their passion been portrayed that we can think of no parallel outside the pages of Richard Feverel.

Mackenzie has an uncanny insight into the hearts of his heroines. Women do shower their love on to the most undeserving men. It is quite true that Pauline will never forget Guy; she is like the nymph on the Grecian Urn . . . it was quite in keeping with passionate, heart-broken Jenny's temperament that she should give herself to a dirty rotter when she found Maurice wanting, though I can never reconcile myself to her marriage; I was not at all surprised

at Sylvia Scarlett becoming a temporary prostitute after leaving Philip.

It is partly because they are so virginal in character, partly because they so hate men to make love to them, that (when the flame is kindled) these heroines descend a little lower than conventional angels on being scorned. Mackenzie is never happier than when he is transcribing the dialogues of his women: one can hear their very accents (if we are not snobs they do not grate on our polished ears), and we fall desperately in love not with their physical beauty so much as with their wonderful vivacity, never-failing spirits, and extraordinary bonhomie.

The tang of bitterness on Sylvia's tongue adds to her charms. These are the lips we wish to hear at carnival-time (when we drop the mask of our respectability) whispering " Viens donc . je t'aime." We need no second invitation. From the crowd of Pierrots we draw our lily-white Columbine, and cease from banging other roysterers on the head with bladders : we set out on an amazingly incredible crusade, and mix with the wives of lavatory-attendants, decadent artists, maniacs who think that they are inside out, Treacherites, priests, murderers, harlots, pseudoEmperors of Byzantium, chorus-girls, and procurators ... we are whirled from the Fulham Road through Granada, Morocco, Brussels, the United States, to Buenos Ayres; from the sylvan quiet of Plashers' Mead to the ugly filthiness of Leppard Street: we meet a fresh romance at every turn in the road. If we tire of one set of companions we can shake them off by taking the first 'bus that passes.

We are swept along so fast that we no longer feel any astonishment at meeting Maurice in the heart of Africa, Arthur Madden in a third-rate hotel in Sulphur

ville, U.S.A., or think it strange that Sylvia, Lily, and Michael should find one another again at a skating-rink dance.

Her mother would go mad on the very day that Jenny gave herself to Danby: the young wife of seventeen in such a world may well know her Petronius and Apuleius, and give her judgment on Aristophanes. The secret is that these are not real people: Mackenzie's is not the world as we know it. Everything is possible on the cinema, and Sylvia Scarlett is the finest film I have ever seen. We go to the pictures to get away from realities, to indulge our senses in a riotous phantasmagoria. "Let the young enjoy theirselves," is the ever-recurring cry of the old in all these books.

"If you could break loose yourself sometimes," cries Sylvia in desperation to her pedantic husband, you'd be much easier to live with."

66

The syrens call; like Fra Lippo Lippi we begin to tear our sheets into ropes to let ourselves down from our prison. . . . We, too, want to join the laughing nymphs who sing to the guitar beneath our window. Transported for the moment into golden asses, we try our hand at the game only to be rebuffed sadly in our search for the real Sylvia-we meet no daughters of joy, but filles de joie, no "lazy, laughing, languid Jenny," but only some desperately dull drab whose sole resemblance to our dream-heroine is that she actually calls us "soppy date" and bids us "chinga-ling" if our purse is too attenuated to glut her desires.

No-the wise man will be content to take Compton Mackenzie at his own valuation.

Exquisite figments of our imagination, Sylvia, Pauline, and Jenny, dream-heroines all, we love you

far, far better than Michael, Guy, and Maurice ever could-but we are no Pygmalions-we prefer such Galateas in the marble. You can never come to life however hard we pray-and we are realists enough in our soberer moments to breathe quite candidly, 66 Who cares? "

Compton Mackenzie is our vicarious adventurer, our vicarious gallant: we owe him much for our vicarious escapades: they leave no nasty taste in the mouth.