A COMPETENT CRITIC
Books in General. By Solomon Eagle. 12mo. 256 pages. Alfred A. Knopf. New York.
THE author of Books in General is a provocative critic and there is something misleading about his method. It looks easy, but it is hard. He begins, for instance, a note on The Depressed Philanthropist with the remark:
"I do not see why anyone but myself should be interested in the mere fact that, except in the way of casual reference, I have always avoided writing a line about Mr. John Galsworthy",
and it sounds delightfully casual and neat. But suppose I had begun this review of Solomon Eagle with the suggestion that it can be of no importance to my readers, or to his, but the truth must out that the publication of Solomon Eagle's book has annoyed me immeasurably. Would that have sounded so well? I doubt it. I should have to go on and explain that the reason is not the inadequacy of the book—it is like one of those photographs which never do the subject justice. No. I am annoyed because Solomon Eagle has been writing since 1913 in The New Statesman and I am the only person of my acquaintance who has been reading him without interruption in all these years. He has been an exclusive pleasure and I have lost him. He is not exactly a playboy of letters but I feel the pain of his going and, even more, the indelicacy of this public sale of his effects. And such good effects! We cannot all have sonnets written about us, but in our little way we can all be stout, and when we make discoveries we are, like Cortez, inclined to be silent for a space because we want to keep them to ourselves.
I wish I could have kept Solomon Eagle. Resigning him, I lose my private hold on his other self, Mr. J. C. Squire, the most versatile and, I am told, the most influential man of letters in England. Mr. Squire's qualities as a poet are discussed elsewhere; his Tricks of the Trade is proof enough that he stands close to Mr. Max Beerbohm as a parodist (his H. G. Wells, with the haunting refrain
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