as I do myself) and yet
have cherished the suspicion that his Columbines and Chelsea fairies and
Moonbeam folk generally were the creations of a sentimentalist who would
have little taste for handling unsympathetic things. Well, if so,
_Philippina_ is the answer to that. Here is the most masterly
portraiture of a woman utterly without imagination or heart or anything
except a kind of futile and worthless attraction, that I remember to
have met for some time. As I say, it is all rather astonishing from Mr.
CALTHROP. The men who love _Flip_, and whose lives are ruined by her,
are easier to understand. About _Sir Timothy Swift_, for example, there
is a touch of the Harlequin, or rather Pierrot, that betrays his
origin. I will not tell you the story, for one reason because its charm
is too elusive to retrieve. I content myself by saying that it seems to
me the best work we have yet had from Mr. CALTHROP, combining his
special and expected graces with an unusual and moving sincerity.

* * * * *

A month or two ago I have no doubt that the England of CHARLES II.'S
declining years would have seemed to me a monstrously exciting country
to live in; at the present moment (unfairly enough) I feel more like
congratulating the hero of Monsignor BENSON'S _Oddsfish!_ (HUTCHINSON)
on the mildness of his adventures for the furtherance of the Catholic
faith. It is true that _Mr. Roger Mallock_ beheld some notable
executions after the TITUS OATES affair, and on the night of the Rye
House Plot had a large meat chopper thrown at his head by one of the
conspirators; but, emissary of the Vatican as he was, he was actually
only once compelled to whip out his sword in self-defence, though on
that occasion he had the extreme bad luck to lose his _fiancee_ through
a misdirected dagger-thrust. Even this tragedy, sufficiently
overwhelming in an ordinary romance, is not, of course, wholly
disastrous in Monsignor BENSON'S eyes, since it enabled _Mr. Mallock_ to
resume the religious life and habit for which he had been originally
intended. For the rest the book is written in a most captivating manner,
and with a plausibility of incident and dialogue only too rare in novels
of the Restoration period. Evidently the author has studied his
authorities (and more particularly Mr. PEPYS) with a praiseworthy
diligence. But in view of the anti-Protestant bias which he naturally
exhibits I feel bound to bid him have a care. If he