ady
who fain would have him gentleman, Starbrace must ride away upon his
panting horse, Pharisee. Love as he may, he cannot live like a rabbit in
a hutch; he must have danger, be taken, cast into a cell, be released to
die by the side of Pharisee, charging the Pretender's bodyguard at
Prestonpans. All this is fine, for she has the secret of the historical
novel: to show not the things that have changed, but those which have
not.

_Starbrace_ is, perhaps, Sheila Kaye-Smith's most brilliant flight, but
not her most sustained. She has had other adventures in literature, such
as _Isle of Thorns_, where Sally Odiarne wanders with Stanger's
travelling show, hopelessly entangled in her loves, unable to seize
happiness, unable to give herself to the tender Raphael, bound to
good-tempered, sensual Andy, until at last she must kill Andy to get
free, kill him to escape to the sea and die. But she finds God:--

'She had come out to seek death, and had found life. Who can stand
against life, the green sea that tumbles round one's limbs and
tears up like matchwood the breakwaters one has built? There,
kneeling in the surf and spray, Sally surrendered to life.'

Sheila Kaye-Smith has not surrendered to life, though the weakness of
her may be found in another book, _Three Against the World_, where the
worthless Furlonger family can but writhe as worms drying in the sun; in
the tired flatness of her last work, _The Challenge to Sirius_. The
vagary of her mind is in such work as criticism: she has published a
study of John Galsworthy which is judicial, though not inspired. But
she was destined for finer tasks. Already in _Spell Land_, the story of
a Sussex farm where lived two people, driven out of the village because
they loved unwed, she had given a hint of her power to see not only man
but the earth. She has almost stated herself in _Sussex Gorse_.

I have read many reviews of this book. I am tired of being told it is
'epic.' It is not quite; it has all the grace that Zola lacked in _La
Terre_, but if the beauty is anything it is Virgilian, not Homeric. The
scheme is immense, the life of Reuben Backfield, of Odiam, inspired in
early youth with the determination to possess Boarzell, the common grown
with gorse and firs, the fierce land of marl and shards where naught
save gorse could live. The opening is a riot, for the Enclosures Act is
in force and the squire is seizing the people's land. In that moment is
bor