t exaggerate. I must add that on a reader whose taste is neither highly
developed nor capable of high development, the effect of the stories will
be similar to their effect on the magazine editor.

THE SURREY LABOURER

[_1 Apr. '09_]

It is a great pleasure to see that Mr. George Bourne's "Memoirs of a
Surrey Labourer" (Duckworth) has, after two years, reached the distinction
of a cheap edition at half a crown. I shall be surprised if this book does
not continue to sell for about a hundred years. And yet, also, I am
surprised that a cheap edition should have come so soon. The "Memoirs"
were very well received on their original publication in 1907; some of the
reviews were indeed remarkable in the frankness with which they accepted
the work as a masterpiece of portraiture and of sociological observation.
But the book had no boom such as Mr. John Lane recently contrived for
another very good and not dissimilar book, Mr. Stephen Reynolds's "A Poor
Man's House." Mr. Stephen Reynolds was more chattered about by literary
London in two months than Mr. George Bourne has been in the eight years
which have passed since he published his first book about Frederick
Bettesworth, the Surrey labourer in question. Mr. Bourne will owe his
popularity in 2009 to the intrinsic excellence of his work, but he owes
his popularity in 1909 to the dogged and talkative enthusiasm of a few
experts in the press and in the world, and of his publishers. There have
been a handful of persons who were determined to make this exceedingly
fine book sell, or perish themselves in the attempt; and it has sold. But
not with the help of mandarins. It is not in the least the kind of book to
catch the roving eye of a mandarin. It is too proud, too austere, too
true, and too tonically cruel to appeal to mandarins. It abounds not at
all in quotable passages. Its subtitle is: "A Record of the Last Year of
Frederick Bettesworth." The mandarins who happened to see it no doubt
turned to seek the death scene at the close, with thoughts of how quotably
Ian Maclaren would have described the death of the old labourer, worn out
by honest and ill-paid toil, surrounded by his beloved fields, and so
forth and so forth. And Mr. George Bourne's description of his hero's
death would no doubt put them right off. I give it in full: "July 25
(Thursday).--Bettesworth died this evening at six o'clock." Oh, Colonel
Newcome, sugared tears, golden gates, glimmering panes, passings