(there is no other word for it) epic; his studies of the
Retreat are almost worthy of what has gone before. For the first time
what has been called 'the peering modern touch' is here applied to great
events, with the result that here is a book unique in literature. Of the
characters--Natasha, Peter, Mary, Dennissoff, the Rostoffs, Helen,
Dologhoff, Bagration, Bolkonsky, and the others; above all, Koutouzoff
and Prince Andrew--Prince Andrew the heroic gentleman, Koutouzoff the
genius of Russia and the war--to meet them once is to take on a set of
friends and enemies for life.

FIELDING

Illusions.

Fielding is one of the most striking figures in our literary history, and
he is one of the most popular as well. But it is questionable if many
people know very much about him after all, or if the Fielding of
legend--the potwalloper of genius at whom we have smiled so often--has
many things in common with the Fielding of fact, the indefatigable
student, the vigorous magistrate, the great and serious artist. You hear
but little of him from himself; for with that mixture of intellectual
egoism and moral unselfishness which is a characteristic of his large and
liberal nature he was as careless of Henry Fielding's sayings and doings
and as indifferent to the fact of Henry Fielding's life and personality
as he was garrulous in respect of the good qualities of Henry Fielding's
friends and truculently talkative about the vices of Henry Fielding's
enemies. And what is exactly known people have somehow or other
contrived to misapprehend and misapply. They have preferred the evidence
of Horace Walpole to that of their own senses. They have suffered the
brilliant antitheses of Lady Mary to obscure and blur the man as they
might have found him in his work. Booth and Jones have been taken for
definite and complete reflections of the author of their being: the parts
for the whole, that is--a light-minded captain of foot and a hot-headed
and soft-hearted young man about town for adequate presentments of the
artist of a new departure and the writer of three or four books of
singular solidity and finish. Whichever way you turn, you are confronted
with appearances each more distorted and more dubious than the other.
Some have chosen to believe the foolish fancies of Murphy, and have
pictured themselves a Fielding begrimed with snuff, heady with champagne,
and smoking so ferociously that out of the wrappings of his tobacco h