NEW BOOKS.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 972, 12 November 1910, Page 9

NEW BOOKS.

"The Life and Times of King Edward ■VII." By H. R. Whates. Vol. I. Cassell and Co.

This is*'the first volume of what wo should say promises to be the best "popular" biography of our late King. As its _ title indicates,. Mr. Whates's work aims at being something much more than a close chronicle of the life of King Edward. We shall have to wait, doubtless, for a considerable time before we receive anything like an official biography, and historians will have to wait, as in the case' of Queen Victoria's letters, for about half a century for tho more intimate documents upon which they must depend. In the meantime, it is an excellent idea to issue a life of the King, illuminated by a running survey of the developments of the age ill which he lived. In few cases has the life of U monarch been so much the history of his time as in the case of Edivard the Seventh, and the treatment of the subject from this point of view is one that has obvious .fascinations for the chronicler. Mr. Whates's first volume carries .us only to the return of tho King, then the Prince of Wales, from his famous tour through Canada and the United States fifty years ago. The scope of the work cannot better be indicated in a. short space than by the citation of the headings to the twelve chapters in this first handsome volume of 240 pages. They are: "Birth and Infancy," "Tho Ancestry of the Guelphs," "Some Earlier Edwards," "Boyhood and College Days." "Seeing the World," "England in Edward's . Childhood —Condition of the Workers," "England ill Edward's Childhood —Some Other Aspects," "England in Edward's Childhood —Science and Culture, -Manners and Modes," "The Boy Prince and the Condition of Europe," "Tho Oversea Dominions in the Youth of Edward VII," "The„Tour in Canada," and,"ln'the Cities of Canada and tho United States." The work, which is beautifully bound in dark-red linen, and finely printed on paper of a special quality, is profusely illustrated with reproductions of drawings, paintings, and photographs. Some of the illustrations- are. fino "Rembrandt" photogravures. The subjects of the illustrations are of great interest, ranging from a photograph of the late Mr. Swinburne to a picture of Milford Sound, froai the Coronation of King Edward to Kicking Horso Pass, m. Canada. The work is one for which a wide popularity can be predicted.

"Rest Harrow. A Comedy of Resolution." By Maurice Hewlett. MacmiWWs Colonial Library. 2s. Gd. ' This is the third of Mr. Hewlett's novels about his gipsy philosopher John Senhouse. Taken as a whole, they are so good .that they ought to be better. The reviewer cannot dismiss them with the stock compliments—"excellent read-

ig for a railway journey;" "impossible to lay the volume down until, the last page is reached*" and so' forth. They ..tacitly and effectually insist upon being treated as literature — as criticisms of life. And regarded .thus thoy are .profoundly unsatisfactory. It is not a question of "teaching," for nothing ;is definitely taught. The fault is a lack of verisimilitude. The mirror that is held up to human ,nature is highly polished, but it. is curved and coloured. The limelight effects are brilliant, but there is no daylight. There is a turning, as though for medicine, towards the open air, but the atmosphere of these books is a hothouse atmosphere. This is partly because, of a lack of humour. Somebody ought to parody these novels —thoy take themselves 'so solemnly. The hero, Senhouse, figured in "Halfway House", (the first to be published, though second in the fictional sequence of events) as sincere, chivalrous, and though eccentric wise. In "Open Country," he gave us glorious philosophical essays called letters to Sanchia. But in 'Itest Harrow," though he still purports to fill the high philosophic role, he has become an egotist and a poseur. He builds him a hut in a valley of the Wiltshire Downs, dresses himself in a white robe with a cowl, and sits about on the grass writing his memoirs. And nobody laughs. The' beautif.ul, inexplicable Sanchia adores him moro thaji ever. So does Struan Glyde, the poetical young gardener, and the worst of it is that the reader is apparently expected to share their feelings. This particula'r kind of sentimental solemnity is connected with an almost exclusively sensuous conception of love. Somebody has truly said that the women of Mr. Hewlett's books are oreatures of the chase. The deplorable fact is tiiat thoy are almost nothing else, - and that is how they differ so profoundly and so widely - from real women. And this shallow, unhumorous, solemnly sensuous view of human relationships falsifies the whole story. 9 Nevertheless "Rest Harrow" will be widely read, and will have jnany admirers. It has that luring tantalising charm which Mr. Hewlett's fiction always has; its portraits, though unlifelike, are vivid; and its style, though mannered, is masterly.

"The Fortunate Princeling, and Other Stories." By A. D. Bright. Illustrated by Harry Rountree. tondon : Duckworth and Co. Wellington: S. and N. Mackay.

This book, by a New Zealand writer, illustrated bv a Now Zealander, is an altogether delightful production. Its four fairy.tales and the illustrations in colour and in black and white, by Mr. Harry Eountree, will give much joy to children and a groat deal of pleasure to their elders. The "prinqeling" of the first story finds it dull to live in a palace and nave his every wish immediately gratified, but happiness comes when he is magically transported to "Farmland" and marries a milkmaid. It is a pleasant inversion of the old stories of poor boys who becomo This core of whim, or wisdom, enhances the charm of a simple, direct, and graceful narrative. All the tales are written with an exquisite fitness of stylo, which it would be difficult to over-praise. In "Rata and the Flowers of Love" Miss Bright has taken a hint from a Maori legend, and develojied it imaginatively into a beautiful fairy story of the happy, old-fashioned sort, that wo all loved when we were young. "Giant Winter and the Spring Slaiden" is not so much a stqry as a prose poem, and that is a form of composition that few (writers can achieve in such a manner that children will' enjoy it. 'Miss Bright is one of tho few. _ "Tho Princess of the Turned Heads" is about a princess who was so distractingly lovely that all who saw her turned their heads to look at her, and ooiild never get them straight again. "And the moral of this story is just what anyono chooses to think it may be." The roputation which Miss Bright won with her first book of fairy tales —"Three Christmas Gifts"—will be more than sustained by- "The Fortunate Princeling," and it is pleasant to learn that-another collection of her stories is expected to lie 011 tho market before long. Mr. Rountrec's illustrations are happily in keeping with the tales, and aro very charming' in themselves.