true. But it is not the whole truth. Let me test it by taking The Reluctant Lover as an example of his art at its best. There are few more readable books on the market: there is a rattling good plot, unexpected dénouement, human characters, adorable heroines, quite a number of them: Mr McKenna has the deftest touch in limning the features and probing the minds of attractive young girls: his dialogue is always clever, if at times unnaturally artificial and stilted he is a master craftsman in avoiding loose ends and polishing rough edges. In some ways this story of the selfish, but entirely lovable boy, Cyril Fitzroy, is the story of the development of every man: "He affects to study women as he studies men, in the light of specimens: and sometimes as works of art by an inspired hand. From a sexual point of view he is completely indifferent and extraordinarily cold-blooded." But he is doomed to fall when the exquisite Myra Woodbridge, piqued by his indifference, sets her cap at him. The description of Lady Delaunay's ball, where the pair first meet and dance together for six hours in succession, is inimitably told: the intellectual sparring between the two is a watered-down Meredith, and therefore more like life as we know it than it is in Meredith. This is not to suggest that Mr. McKenna can compare in any way whatever with this or any other genius : I still maintain that he has no genius: but his talent is unmistakable. I could find it in my heart to wish that he would quote less Latin, and not hark back so frequently to Oxford experiences. He writes like the elderly uncle he pretends to be in Sonia. Even as an undergraduate he must have been very like a don. Still quite a young man, like Cyril Fitzroy, he yet talks academically and in the tones of sophis

ticated, disillusioned middle age. Not for him the follies and extravagances of youth. One reads something of himself in the character of Rodney Trelawney, the young Oxford don prematurely aged and worldweary, knowing little of sympathy, inexperienced in life, a little crabbed, a little inhuman, a little lonely, yet immensely complacent and self-satisfied. He must have his Oxford lunch of dressed crab, quails, green peas, marasquino jelly, croustade au parmeson, strawberries, and iced hock cup; his clothes must fit him perfectly, and there must always be the white silk pyjamas; there must be a persistent dredging of the waters of the memory to recall old Oxford "rags," old Oxford tales discreditable to Balliol, upholding the prestige of The House. . . . But all this, again, is a trifle unkind and only partly true. There is plenty of intellectual stimulus, and very little beating about the bush, no morbid psychology here: on the other hand, there is some very straight talk at times, as in this illuminating passage: "Give a thing for nothing, and it will be valued at nothing: give poor people free education, and they regard it as valueless. If Rodney [it is Myra speaking] gives me the whole-hearted adoration you speak of-and I don't have to struggle for it—I shall count it as valueless, and in course of time it will die of neglect. Which is not a good condition for 'sickness and health, weal and woe,' for life. The remedy is to find some one who attracts me and force him to love me whether he wants to or not. And when I have won his love I shall value it, and when he has had to part with it with a struggle he will see the value I put upon it, and know it is in good hands, and he will honour me for the fight I have fought and the victory I have won." She is thinking, of course, of Cyril, who is

neither primitive (the body-hunter) nor in the second stage of civilisation (the heart-hunter, the philanderer), but the soul-hunter, the connoisseur of rare emotions. The battle-royal between Myra and Cyril when he shows his hand is a masterpiece of analysis. He tries to show her the unwisdom of setting one's affections on anything or any one in the whole world other than oneself.

"I suggest that happiness only comes to the man who has strangled all affections and trodden every I appetite under foot. If you marry, you are giving a hostage to misfortune in your wife and every one of your children. If you grow fond of a cat or a book or a house the cat may die, the book may be lost, the house burnt down."

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For the man who cannot take pleasure in the i sight and scent of a rose because he knows it must soon die, there is no hope," quotes Myra. Later . Cyril is brought to book by a member of his own family. "It's better to cultivate and cherish a rose 1 and to enjoy its scent and beauty, even if it ultimately dies, than to be content with a wax flower which never fades, but never gives you a moment's gratification in a lifetime. We've all got to die, Cyril, and my complaint against your philosophy is not that it is rottenly unsound, not that it is going to make yours an unhappy life, but simply that you play the game of life and don't want to obey the rules.

...

You're going to die probably before your work— whatever it may be-is finished. So am I. Well, 1 do the best you can in the interval. If you love your wife and she dies before you, well-so much the worse for you, and make the most you can of the time you're together. For heaven's sake don't imagine that you're entitled to a special Providence which is going to insure you against all risks free of

D

charge, and don't have a grievance when death lays hands on your most cherished possessions." But he is not won over even when, in a third great scene, Myra shows her love for him and is prepared to marry him he sees too clearly: he loves her, but he is afraid of himself. “Before a man marries he must feel that his wife is indispensable to him, and that he could not go on living without her. I don't feel that. I've always boasted of not being dependent on any one for my happiness, and I've grown to believe it." The strange couple agree to a secret engagement for two years to test Cyril's idea that it may only be an infatuation. Cyril goes abroad with his sixteen year-old ward, Violet, another charming girl. Rodney, a rejected lover of Myra's, again returns to the attack and fails, and at length the time of probation comes to an end, Myra having discovered without the help of the gods the one man for whom she would sacrifice everything in the world; then suddenly Violet falls ill and nearly dies of diphtheria, while Cyril and Myra talk interminably (quoting the classics freely) in a way calculated to shock the careless reader. Cyril then saves Violet's life by risking his own, and to his astonishment finds that his ward on her recovery is in love with him, and he marries her, but Myra has the last word. "I'm too independent for you, Cyril: you want somebody who will look up to you and depend on you and need your help and support. That's why you and Violet are going to be very well suited and very happy together."

This really is the secret of Mr McKenna's limitations: all his heroes and heroines are good only in as far as they are well suited and happy together. It is time he deserted his Sonia and returned to Violet.

VI

THE CENTENARY OF JANE AUSTEN

A

I

S a callow undergraduate I remember being roused out of an apathetic stupor while at

tending a lecture on the history of the English novel by these startling words on the subject of Jane Austen's readers: "Rabbits cannot be expected to take an interest or see anything humorous in the sight of other rabbits performing their ludicrous antics."

Was the reason that I had failed to appreciate the subtlety and charm of Jane Austen solely due to the fact that I was dull of mind and of as commonplace a character as some of the dramatis personæ of her works, and therefore unable to see the comic side of her delineation? I returned home determined to find out exactly where her power lay, what claims she really had to be called the feminine counterpart to Shakespeare.

I found that the mistake I had made was not entirely due to my own ineptitude, but that I had read her too fast. I had hurried over page after page in order to reach the story, to get the hang of the plot, to find some exciting incident, for all the world as if I expected some lurid "film" drama. I had to revise my method of reading. I had to learn the hard lesson that Jane Austen was not Aunt Jane" of the crinoline era moving stiffly in an artificial circumscribed area, speaking correctly in an old

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