the outstanding fact about such popularity is that in face of
it any affectation of superiority becomes simply silly. One has got to
accept this creation of Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS as among the definite
literary phenomena of our time. In the immediate spasm before me
_Tarzan_ (who is, if you need telling, a kind of horribly exaggerated
_Mowgli_ after a diet of the Food of the Gods) is represented as placing
himself at the disposal of the British forces in East Africa, and
attacking the Germans with man-eating lions. The rather chastening
feature of which was my own unexpected enjoyment of the idea. Even, for
one disconcerting moment, like the persons in the admonitory anecdotes
who taste opium "just for fun," I began to feel that perhaps.... However
it passed, and the temptation has not returned. Meanwhile the real
nature of Tarzanism, whether some sinister possession or simply the
age-long appetite for the monstrous, just now a little out of hand,
remains as far from solution as ever.

* * * * *

Mr. HORACE BLEACKLEY, whose last excursion into political fiction was a
description of an opera-bouffe Labour Government in action, addresses
himself, in _The Monster_ (HEINEMANN), to a more serious theme. His
monster is the factory system, and if I say that this witty novel will
provide the ignorant and comfortable with instruction as well as
entertainment I hope I shan't have done him any harm. The author, while
making his points against the system, notes truly enough that the risen
ranker, the one who had been through the dreadful mill, with its
ninety-hour working week for children, became the hardest master during
that wonderful period of the Manchesterising of England which laid the
train for the explosions of our present discontents. He reminds us also
of that admirable speech, made about every ten years for the last
hundred or so in the House with the same fervour and conviction, to the
effect that any change in conditions or wages would surely mean the
complete ruin of the country. A comforting speech, that! Perhaps Mr.
BLEACKLEY, presenting three generations from Peterloo to the Jubilee of
QUEEN VICTORIA, covers too much ground for full effect, but he has
pleasantly gilded a wholesome pill for pleasant people. Good luck to
him.

* * * * *

I did not take the publishers' statement that _Pengard Awake_ (METHUEN)
was "entirely unlike Mr. STRAUS'S previo