MRS. HUMPHRY WARD'S new novel, "The History of David Grieve," (Macmillan) is not of the kind to be adequately summarized in a few paragraphs. It is full of suggestive thoughts leading into many fields of modern speculation. Indeed it is one of the few modern novels which takes itself seriously, and puts itself on a plane to be judged with other works of mature intellects. So far as it is a hand-book of modern philosophy it may interest many estimable men and women who do not read novels, and that phase of it may be safely left to them to elucidate. They seldom have such a good opportunity to air their creeds and prejudices, and will no doubt take full advantage of it. Indeed it was through them that her previous book, "Robert Elsmere," was so widely circulated-for they spoke to the multitude of people who read fiction only occasionally, and got them interested in it. But, looking at "David Grieve" as at any other carefully constructed novel appealing to the emotions and fancy of the reader, and to his good taste, there are many things about it which fascinate that less serious body of men and women who are more interested in the present moment than in problems of heredity and social science. For them Book III, "Storm and Stress," stands alone as the flower of the novel-only needing a few pages of introduction and conclusion to be complete in itself. Here are idyllic love-making, fierce passion, and tragic possibilities-all set in the gay background of Paris and the beauties of Barbizon. One must go to Richard Fenerel to find such another picture of the heart of a young man-such a sympathetic interpretation of why his greatest strength is his greatest weakness. In this part of the novel there is nothing that could be omitted, nothing to be elaborated-for here the writer ceases to be encyclopædic, and tells a story with directness and fervor. of the details of living-what she calls the "gospel of getting on." For her the most interesting thing is that conflict of idealism with hard necessity which makes character-and that is the meaning of David Grieve. For so many wiiters this conflict is a series of abstractions, but Mrs. Ward has the "visualising faculty" (which she so often refers to as the marked possession of David). She sees things as pictures of reality, not outlines-but full of color, detail, eccentricity, atmosphere. That is why you get the most perfect illusion, while you read, that Mrs. Ward has very little to do with the story, that she is merely telling you what she has seen and known of the actual life of David Grieve. The very highest achievements of fiction lie on that plane, and because of this wonderful gift Mrs. Ward puts herself under the most rigorous standard of judgment and comparison. Then you begin to ask why with such fertility of imagination, such a plethora of material, she did not exercise the faculty of selection which her culture must have given her? If one-half of the first two books could have been chosen and the other left, the cumulative force of the novel would have gained immensely. You feel that she has set out to account for every fact in David's life by heredity and experience, and that you are not to miss a single detail in the process. The result is a most complex and highly organized machine, with lines of force and influence crossing and recrossing, until the reader is inextricably lost in trying to follow them. Then he exclaims, "Truly this writer's ways are more mysterious than the ways of Providence, and she has constructed a problem of fiction that is more complicated than the problem of life." In the end David seemed to get around to the simplicity of a very great teacher, for "it seemed to him that he had been taught of God' NEW BOOKS. ST. NICHOLAS. Volume 18. New York: The Century Company. The Flying Islands of the Night. By James Whitcomb Riley. Indianapolis: The Bowen-Merrill Company. Glimpses of Italian Society in the Eighteenth Century. From the "Journey" of Mrs. Piozzi. With an Introduction by the Countess Evelyn Martinengo Cesareseo. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. Barracks, Bivouacks and Battles. By Archibald Forbes, LL. D. London and New York: MacMillan and Company. Shall Girls Propose? By a "Speculative Bachelor." Cassell Publishing Company. New York: through natural affection, through repentance, through sorrow, through "H the constant energies of the intellect." TOMER must have been triplets." He was born in three different places." When I think of the waists that right sleeve has surrounded In waltzing, of course-and what tresses have pressed The lapel of that coat, yum-yum! I'm confounded And I fondly remember the scores of good dinners, And there are the trousers: for years they've been flitting |