s not chosen altogether
the right name for his second volume of theatrical and Bohemian
gossip, _A Playgoer's Memories_ (GRANT RICHARDS). It is not so
unsophisticated as the title had somehow led me to expect. Indeed
"unsophisticated" is perhaps the last epithet that could justly be
applied to Mr. HIBBERT'S memories. I fancy I had unconsciously been
looking for something more in the style of my own ignorant playgoing.
"How wonderful she was in that scene with the broker's man," or "Do
you remember the opening of the Third Act?" Not thus Mr. HIBBERT. For
him the play itself is far less the thing than a peg upon which
to hang all sorts of tags and bobtails of recollection, financial,
technical and just not scandalous because of the discretion of the
telling. His book is a repository of theatrical information, but the
great part of it of more absorbing concern for the manager's-room or
the stage-door than, say, the dress circle. But I must not be wanting
in gratitude for the entertainment which, for all this carping, I
certainly derived from it. As an expert on stage finance, for example,
to-day and forty years back, Mr. HIBBERT has revelations that may well
cause the least concerned to marvel. And there is an appendix, which
gives a list of Drury Lane pantomimes, with casts, for half a century,
including, of course, the incomparable first one; but that is not
a memory of this world. A book to be kept for odd references in two
senses.

* * * * *

[Illustration: CULPABLE NEGLIGENCE ON THE PART OF AN EDITOR OF AN
ILLUSTRATED PAPER. IMPENDING LIBEL ACTIONS.

CAPTAIN ERIC BLIGHTMAN, WHOSE ENGAGEMENT TO LADY SARAH HUBB HAS JUST
BEEN ANNOUNCED.

BASHER SMITH, EX-HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPION OF STEPNEY, WHO IS TO ACT AS
REFEREE AT THE CORKERY-HACKETT FIGHT ON FRIDAY.]

[Transcriber's Note: The captions were reversed.]

* * * * *

What most interfered with my peace of mind over _The Happy Highways_
(HEINEMANN) was, I think, its almost entire absence of highway, and
the exceedingly unhappy nature of its confused and uncharted lanes.
Indeed, I am wondering now if the title may not have been an instance
of bitter irony on the part of Miss STORM JAMESON. Certainly a more
formless mass of writing never within my experience masqueraded as a
novel. There are ideas and reflections--these last mostly angry and
vaguely socialistic--and here and there glimpses of illusory narrati