much harmless amusement as possible) and Aaron (the sour-faced Puritan, the dyspeptic old antediluvian who was envious of his neighbour's pleasure, and so counted all pleasure as sin).

A comparison between the Russian temperament and the English leads to the following acute observation :

"The Russian has convictions, but no principles. The Englishman has principles, but no convictions, he obeys the laws: a criminal requires imagination. He prides himself on his immunity from vexatious imposts. Yet whisky, the best quality of which is worth tenpence a bottle, is taxed till it costs five shillings; tobacco which could profitably be sold at twopence a pound goes for fivepence an ounce. Englishmen will submit to any number of these extortions, being persuaded that such things are for the good of the nation. That is an Englishman's method of procuring happiness: to deny himself pleasure in order to save his neighbour's soul.”

To return for a moment to individual characterisations it is pleasant to envisage the person of Mrs Parker, wife of the infamous Freddy, from the following description: "She possessed that most priceless of all gifts she believed her own lies. She looked people straight in the face and spoke from her heart; a falsehood, before it left her lips, had grown into a flaming truth." Catholics had been known to cross themselves at the fertility of her constructive imagination. Her death leads to some aphorisms on the subject of mortality on the part of Mr Keith, which I find it hard to refrain from quoting. But I must hurry on, past the story of the marrowfats and the reason why so many American women are as flat as boards, in front and behind (a hundred guesses

would leave you as far as ever from the truth here); past the murder of Muhlen (yes, things do happen, even on lotus-eating Nepenthe), and the amazing speech for the defence of the supposed criminal by Don Guistino ("He had a mother: he had no mother") to St Eulalia, patroness of Nepenthean sailors. St Eulalia, like St Dodekanus, arrests our attention. She was born in 1712, took the vow of chastity at the age of two years and eleven months, never washed, nor changed her underwear: she put baskets of sea-urchins in her bed, and as a penance forced herself to catch the legions of vermin that infested her brown blanket, count them, separate the males from the females, set them free once more, and begin over again. She died at the age of fourteen years and two months. Her corpse forthwith became roseate in colour, exhaled a delicious odour of violets for twenty weeks, and performed countless miracles. On dissection, a portrait of St James of Compostella was discovered imbedded in her liver.

For twelve days did the colonial bishop remain on this amazing island in a kind of merry nightmare. There was something bright and diabolical in the tone of the place, something kaleidoscopic-a frolicsome perversity. Purifying, at the same time. It swept away the cobwebs. It gave you a measure, a standard, whereby to compute earthly affairs. He had carved out new and round values: a workable, upto-date theory of life. He was in fine trim. His liver-he forgot that he ever had one. Nepenthe had done him good all round.

And so, if we read this book in the right spirit, our visit to Nepenthe will do us good all round.

England, after the tingling realism of that Mediterranean island, may well seem parochial, rather dun,

fireproof, seaworthy; but we may cease to be so horrified at the extreme and the unconventional. Our visit, if it does nothing else, ought to make us more tolerant.

On one reader, at any rate, it has had the effect of wishing for more so strongly that, in spite of the generous fare of 464 closely printed pages given in this volume, he prays night and day that Mr Douglas may continue for the rest of his life to write down all that he knows about his Treasure Island. For surely its treasure is inexhaustible. This book has no beginning and no end. It just stops when the author thinks he has said enough for the moment. But let him not imagine that he said enough for all time. I for one could go on reading about Nepenthe were the book as long as the Encyclopædia Britannica, but then I am fond of humour, and humour in our literature is rare indeed.

IV

FRANK SWINNERTON

R SWINNERTON has already nine novels to his credit, all of them masterpieces of style,

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and is still comparatively unknown. Yet he is as well able to reproduce the atmosphere of life in the successful and unsuccessful suburbs of Weybridge and Kennington as Stephen McKenna is in the aristocratic world of Mayfair and Kensington (" where the dialect songs come from "). He is far more alive than Mr McKenna: his vision is larger, his sympathies broader.

In Nocturne, a wonderful tour de force, in which the whole action is confined to six hours, we actually share every minute of the young milliner's experiences. The small house in Kennington Park, where laughing, loving, passionate Jenny lives with her paralysed "Pa" and jealous Martha-like sister "Em," is put before us perfect in every detail: we see “Pa's " appetite for romance satisfied in the shape of murder and sudden death in the newspaper, as his appetite for food is by mountainous apple-dumplings. "Em's" yearnings are reserved for the insipid "Alf," who "walks out" with Jenny, while Jenny's may be gauged from this extract: "She wanted to go out in the darkness that so pleasantly enwrapped the earth, back to the stir and glitter of life somewhere beyond. Her vision had been far different from this scene. It carried her over land and sea right into an unexplored realm where there was wild laughter

and noise, where hearts broke tragically and women in the hour of ruin turned triumphant eyes to the glory of life, and where blinding, streaming lights and scintillating colours made everything seem different, made it seem romantic, rapturous, indescribable. From that vision back to the cupboard-like house in Kennington Park, and stodgy Alf Rylett, and supper of stew and bread-and-butter pudding, and Pa, and this little sobbing figure in her arms, was an incongruous flight. It made Jenny's mouth twist in a smile so painful that it was almost a grimace.

"Oh, lor!' she said again, under her breath. 'What a life." "

Pa was something like an old beloved dog, unable to speak; it was Emmy who best understood the bitterness of his soul; it was Emmy who was most with him, and Emmy who felt sometimes as if she could kill him in her fierce hatred of his helplessness and stupidity. Emmy was harder than Jenny on the surface, but weaker below. Jenny was selfsufficient, self-protective, more happy-go-lucky, more humorous than Emmy. We see these sisters (who love one another deeply) first quarrelling over Alf. He prefers Jenny, and she treats him like dirt, while Emmy is furiously jealous.

"He's all right in his way," admitted Jenny. "He's clean. But he's quiet .. he's got no devil in him. Sort of man who tells you what he likes for breakfast. I only go with him. . . . Well, you know why, as well as I do. But he's never on for a bit of fun. That's it: he's got no devil in him. I don't like that kind. Prefer the other sort.'

A knock at the door interrupts the sisters' tart arguments, and Alf appears armed with seats for the theatre; before he has the chance to invite Jenny