end Mr. HUGH ELLIOT'S volume on
_Herbert Spencer_ (CONSTABLE) as light reading, though the ungodly may wax
merry over the philosopher's first swear-word, at the age of thirty-six, in
the matter of a tangled fishing-line, and may be kindled at the later
picture of a middle-aged sportsman shinning, effectively too, after a
Neapolitan who had pinched his opera-glasses. Fine human traits these in a
character which will strike the normal man as bewilderingly unlike the
general run of the species. The serious-flippant reader, tackling Mr.
ELLIOT'S elaborate and acute analyses, may get an impression of an
obstinate old apriorist, a sort of White Knight of Philosophyland, with all
manner of reasoned-out "inventions" at his saddle-bow (labelled
"Homogeneity-Heterogeneity," "Unknowable," "Ghost Theory,"
"Presentative-Representative"), which don't seem, somehow, as helpful as
their inventor assumes. And 'tis certain he took tosses into many of the
pits of his dangerous deductive method. I don't present this as Mr.
ELLIOT'S view. He is respectful-critical, and makes perhaps the best case
for his old master's claim to greatness out of the assumption that SPENCER
himself, stark enemy to authority and dogmatism, would have preferred his
biographer's critical examination to any mere "master's-voice" reproduction
of Spencerian doctrine. I wonder if he would!

* * * * *

Miss F.E. MILLS YOUNG'S newest story has at least this much merit about it,
that no one who has seen the title can complain thereafter of having been
taken unawares by the course of the narrative. That is perhaps as well,
for, having discovered in the opening chapters a sufficiently charming
_Pamela_ living in perpetual honeymoon with a partner rich, good-looking
and with no particular occupation to interfere with unlimited motor trips
and dinner parties, we might have imagined the tale was going to remain a
jolly meaningless thing like that all through, and so have been as much
shocked as the heroine herself on reading the fatal letter. But, since we
knew the book to be called straight out _The Bigamist_ (LANE), we could
have no possible difficulty in foreseeing the emergence of that other wife
from the buried past ready to pounce down on poor little _Pam_ at her
happiest. And of course she duly appeared. Not that such happiness could in
any case have lasted long, for the man was, flatly, a cur, not deserving
the notice of any of the rathe