ALE, and
some devoted friends have, with perfect biographical tact, prepared. But
for CHARLES LISTER'S untimely death, leading his men against the Turks in
July, 1915, most of the letters in this book would never have been printed
at all; for whatever his career might have become--and he was a man apart
and bound for distinction--and however great a record were his, the early
years could not be thus liberally illumined. But since death decreed that
these early years--he was not quite twenty-eight when he was wounded for
the third time and succumbed--should constitute all his career, we have
this notable and beautiful book. If one had to put but a single epithet to
it I should choose "radiant." At Eton, at Balliol, at the Embassies in Rome
and Constantinople, and in the Army, CHARLES LISTER shed radiance. All his
many friends testify to this. As for his letters, they are clear and gay
and human; and they have also a sagacity that many older and more
determined observers of life might envy; while that one to Lady DESBOROUGH
upon the death of his great friend, JULIAN GRENFELL, is literature. Every
page is interesting, but some are far more than that; and at the end one
has almost too moving a concept of an ardent idealistic English gentleman
met too late.

* * * * *

At first sight, perhaps, _Nothing Matters_ (CASSELL) may sound to you a
somewhat, shall I say, transatlantic title for a book published in these
days, when we are all learning how enormously everything matters. But this
emotion will only last till you have read Sir HERBERT BEERBOHM TREE'S
disarming little preface. Personally, it left me regretting only one thing
in the volume (or, to be more accurate, outside it), which was the design
of its very unornamental wrapper--a lapse, surely, from taste, for which it
would probably be quite unfair to blame the writer of what lies within.
This is almost all of it excellent fooling, and includes a brace of longish
short-stories (rather in the fantastic style of brother MAX); some fugitive
pieces that you may recall as they flitted through the fields of
journalism; with, for stiffening, a reprint of the author's admirable
lecture upon "The Importance of Humour in Tragedy." This is a title that
you may well take as a motto for the whole book. It will have, I think, a
warm welcome from Sir HERBERT'S many friends and admirers, even should it
turn out to be the case that some of his plots have