AN HISTORICAL NOVEL
The Conquered. By Naomi Mitchison. 12mo. 317 pages. Harcourt, Brace and Company. $2.
THE writing of a first-rate historical novel demands not only a thorough knowledge of the selected period, but also considerable imaginative power, and, most important of all, a high order of literary tact. It is extremely doubtful whether Mrs Mitchison is sufficiently endowed with the two latter qualifications.
Her book, The Conquered, is concerned with the subjection of Gaul by Julius Caesar and the plot of her story has to do with the friendship that springs up between the Roman officer, Titus, and his servant the enslaved Gaul, Meromic—a friendship pregnant with the kind of drama which inevitably rises out of a conflict between patriotism and a personal relationship.
In spite of the book's historic accuracy one's illusion of reality is continually being unsettled by the obtrusion of this or that word of modern association. So much is this the case that, for the first time, one comes to appreciate how invaluable can be, on occasions, the old-fashioned device of using archaic language in this sort of writing. For example, when Mrs Mitchison causes Meromic and Fiommar to indulge in the following dialogue one feels one's sense of the appropriate thoroughly outraged. In historic fiction the mere suspicion of jocosity is dangerous and when it is suggestive of any modern variety of facetiousness all but fatal. The two barbarians have been enjoying a swim near their favourite Crabland.
"'I shan't be able to do this when I'm married!' sighed Fiommar, putting on her clothes.
"'Oh, do stop about being married!' the brother answered. 'It's not that a bit, it's getting old. Uncle's not married, but he never goes swimming about—I wish he did!"
"It conjured up, for both of them the infinitely ludicrous picture of the Druid uncle swimming very solemnly and completely in long white robes, with his mistletoe wreath just the tiniest bit on one
