ing distressed passengers. Well, what I in my brutal way want to
know is whether this is a joke, or what. Because if I have to credit
it, over goes the rest of the plot into frank make-believe. And
fantasy of this kind consorts but ill with a scheme that embraces
such realities as heart-failure and typhus. Not in any case that Miss
DELAGEEVE'S plot could be called exactly convincing. "Preposterous"
would be the apter word for this society of the Blue-Bean Wearers, in
which vague elderly persons wandered about with sadly self-conscious
children and talked like the dialogue in clever books. This at least
was the impression conveyed to me. I may add that I was continually
aware of a certainty that Miss DELAGREVE will do very much better when
she selects a simpler and less affected subject.

* * * * *

In _Douglas Jerrold_ (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) Mr. WALTER JERROLD has
executed a pious task. He has written the life of his grandfather, and
has done it with great enthusiasm. The work is in two volumes, one
thick and the other thin, and sometimes I cannot help feeling that
one volume, the thin one, would have been enough. DOUGLAS JERROLD'S
reputation depends upon his work in _Punch_ and his writing of plays,
of which nearly seventy stand to his credit. To _Punch_ he contributed
from the second number and soon became a power by means of "Mrs.
Caudle's Curtain Lectures," "The Story of a Feather" and countless
other articles which suited the taste of the public of that day. Of
his work for _Punch_ there is only the barest mention in this book,
for that story has already been told at some length by the same
author. In the present book Mr. WALTER JERROLD devotes a large amount
of space to a review of DOUGLAS JERROLD'S theatrical pieces. Where
now is a five-act comedy, entitled _Bubbles of the Day_, which at the
time of its production was described as "one of the wittiest and best
constructed comedies in the English language"? I am afraid that this
comedy, and even _Black-eyed Susan_, JERROLD'S greatest triumph, have
passed away into the limbo of forgotten plays and can never return
to us. Another drama had in it as one of the characters "a certain
cowardly English traveller named Luckless Tramp," a name, I should
have thought, quite sufficient in itself to swamp every possible
chance of success; yet our forefathers seem to have had no difficulty
in accommodating themselves to it.

* *