s as
though it were a labour of love. It bears the imprint of an eager, almost
consuming desire to say truly what is in his heart.

"Personally, I found myself aching with pain when, yearning for sympathy,
Philip begs the wretched Mildred, never his mistress but on his level, to
no more than tolerate him. He finally humiliates himself to the extent of
exclaiming, 'You don't know what it means to be a cripple!' The pathos of
it plumbs the depths. The death of Fannie Price, of the sixteen-year-old
mother in the slum, of Cronshaw, and the rambling agonies of old Ducroz
and of Philip himself, are perfect in their appeal.

"There are many other and all equally brilliant pictures. No one short of
a genius could rout the philosophers from their lairs and label them as
individuals 'tempering life with rules agreeable to themselves' or could
follow Mildred Rogers, waitress of the London A B C restaurant, through
all the shabby windings of her tawdry soul. No other than a genius endowed
with an immense capacity for understanding and pity could have sympathised
with Fannie Price, with her futile and self-destructive art dreams; or old
Cronshaw, the wastrel of poetry and philosophy; or Mons. Ducroz, the
worn-out revolutionary; or Thorne Athelny, the caged grandee of Spain; or
Leonard Upjohn, airy master of the art of self-advancement; or Dr. South,
the vicar of Blackstable, and his wife--these are masterpieces. They are
marvellous portraits; they are as smooth as a Vermeer, as definite as a
Hals; as brooding and moving as a Rembrandt. The study of Carey himself,
while one sees him more as a medium through which the others express
themselves, still registers photographically at times. He is by no means a
brooding voice but a definite, active, vigorous character.

"If the book can be said to have a fault it will lie for some in its
length, 300,000 words, or for others in the peculiar reticence with which
the last love affair in the story is handled. Until the coming of Sallie
Athelny all has been described with the utmost frankness. No situation,
however crude or embarrassing, has been shirked. In the matter of the
process by which he arrived at the intimacy which resulted in her becoming
pregnant not a word is said. All at once, by a slight frown which she
subsequently explains, the truth is forced upon you that there has been a
series of intimacies which have not been accounted for. After Mildred
Rogers and his relationship with N