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BRIEFER MENTION
A Miscellany of British Poetry: 1919, edited by W. Kean Seymour (decorations, 8vo, 14§ pages; Harcourt, Brace & Howe), collects the more innocuous of the Georgian Poets, whose love is for birds and trees and myths. The omission of D. H. Lawrence, J. C. Squire, and Siegfried Sassoon—the more robust members of that group—is a little hard to explain, as is also the inclusion of Edith Sitwell, whose modernity seems a bit intrusive—like an aeroplane at a tea-party.
The Craft of the Tortoise: A Play in Four Acts, by Algernon Tassin (12mo, 1§57 pages; Boni & Liveright), is really four pseudo-historical variations on one theme—woman (the tortoise), though hobbled by the hare, beats him to it by the exercise of her tricksy slave wits. A preface hopes she will relinquish the dishonest privileges of the slave when she has learned to exercise the rights of the freewoman. The plays hover between satire and burlesque, and contain much that is arbitrary, didactic, and as inept as the figurative title; but they contrive to be both entertaining and provocative.
Essays on Art, by A. Clutton-Brock (12mo, 144 pages; Scribner), are united by the author's well expounded "belief that art, like other human activities, is subject to the will of man." He desires to provide a public, since he cannot create genius, and asks how we can so provide when our professors cannot furnish their own houses or our colleges build good buildings. These essays, reprinted from the London Times Literary Supplement, are vigorous, informative, and often, as in the Leonardo, very well written.
Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University: Collection of Mediaeval and Renaissance Paintings (illustrated, 4to, 380 pages; Harvard University Press, Cambridge) "undertakes to fulfil the functions of a handbook" both for Harvard students of the Fine Arts and for visitors. It is in fact not only a most convenient and instructive catalogue to a very important collection, but also a scholarly treatise on the periods. The inevitable slips in dates and such matters will be corrected in due course; the sound critical material will for a long time make the Fogg the envy of much older and larger institutions.
