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BRIEFER MENTION
Down the River, by Roscoe W. Brink (12mo, 171 pages; Holt: $1.90) is a novel in free verse that deserves consideration only because of its form. It is a pity that Mr Brink is not a more gifted novelist, that he is so mediocre a writer of verse, for his experiment is in itself interesting. His accomplishment is negligible, but he has pointed to an ideal medium of expression for our contemporary novelists who think in "significant flashes," who rigorously sand-blast the soft spots from their narratives. The present story comes to us from the mouth of Belle, the uneducated, usually ungrammatical woman who—telling the story of herself, her husband, and their children—speaks for innumerable drudging wives and mothers. Mr Brink would have us believe that Belle, following the advice of Sydney, looked into her heart and wrote. We can believe that she may have found there such a maternal image as that of the sky "crooning over the city"; but we cannot credit her ever stumbling on such verbal felicities as "lonely and cloistered in the weaving rain" or "Fate brooding like a prodigal giant." Mr Brink might have written poetry in his own person, or he might have written poetry in Belle's natural language; but he chose to make her speak with the words of Weaver and of Fletcher, and he has paid heavily.
An Instrument of the Gods, by Lincoln Colcord (12mo, 321 pages; Macmillan: $2) is a group of sea stories that are not quite bad enough to be ignored nor quite good enough to be damned. As popular tales of the bounding main, chiefly in the vicinity of China, the adventures which Mr Colcord relates, however, unquestionably deserve a hearing in the market-places for which they are perhaps deliberately intended. The characterizations are rubber-stamped, but there are frequent dashes of spume and spray which could have been photographed only by a sailor. A number of chanties are thrown in for good measure.
Love and Freindship, by Jane Austen (12mo, 174 pages; Stokes: $2) is, according to Mr Chesterton, who writes the preface, "really a rattling burlesque" and "something intrinsically important to literature and literary history." It is not likely that the editor overstates the case. Foreshadowings of great work are often tedious; in this case they are bright and airy; the gentle irony of Pride And Prejudice flourished early—it is only remarkable that it was never corrupted. A special word can be said for the sixteen-page history of England, maliciously written to prove the innocence of Mary Queen of Scots.
Escape, by Jeffery E. Jeffery (12mo, 325 pages; Seltzer: $2) is deceptive both in its title, which indicates the theme of the book, and in manner. The first thirty pages promise well; but gradually it becomes evident that the easy reading offered is due simply to the absence of any turn of phrase one might care to pause over; and the pleasurable reticence of the narrative loses itself in repetitions. The subject-matter, which implies struggle ending in either victory or defeat, is irritatingly bungled. The heroine's efforts end in compromise: an outcome true to life, certainly, but one which, to be effective in a novel, must appear inevitable. In this instance it seems the least logical of all possible solutions. The book is a failure because the author, having chanced upon an idea, never troubled to think it out.
