LITERARY COLUMN.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 66, 15 September 1906, Page 11

LITERARY COLUMN.

NEW BOOKS AND NEW EDITIONS. " Jimmy Quixote." By Tom Gallon. London : George 801 l and Sons. The author of "Nobody's Baby" has a remarkable, love of childhood, and is ono of the few writers who can invest tie difficult subject of babies with real literary interest. In the present case he has completely succeeded in doing so in his sketch of the solitary and kindly " Old Paul," nicknamed " the collector of babies," who has a family of three, two trirls and a boy. The first adopted, Mcira, was the infant daughter of an old sweetheart, taken for her mother's sake, and a kindly sympathy and a hunger for j love brought the others. A wealthy i man, ho neglected to make a will, and tlio heir-at-law, a distant relative, recognised no responsibility, hence the life struggle- of two out of the three — Moira and Jimmy. In the later chapters, the author, if we may accept a brief statement in his preface, becomes to some extent autobiographical; certainly, the struggles and disappointments of <v young author and dramatist are well pourtrayed. The perennial feud between author and publisher figures boldly in the story — is perhaps a little too much emphasised. Rider Haggard, as tho world knows, wrote a novel especially to relieve his feelings regarding a firm with whom he had made a bad bargain ; Canon Farrar cherished undying resent--ment against the same house for making a fortune out of a book which both \ author and publisher had underrated in manuscript, but it is tho case of iEsop's old fable over again — it is always the man and not the lion who paints the lion-hunt. Publishers, on their part, sometimes make very bad bargains, and say nothing. There is some excellent character-painting in the story, but we confess that the two leading figures are disappointing. Moira's lapse Is almost incredible, and " Jimmy," in his striving for success, becomes etupid as well as selfish, and is a very poor "Quixote' indeed. It is a favourite and legitimate theme in novel or play for the hero or heroine to bo shaped to better uses by the stern discipline of life, and Mr. Gallon eeemj to have had this leading thought in mind, but he' has not developed it as well as he might hay© done, and the story falls short accordingly, both ethically and as a work of art. "Count Bunker: Being a bald yet veracious chronicle containing 6ome further particulars of two gentlemen whose previous careers were touched upon in a tome entitled ' The Lunatic at Larg.3.' " By J. Storer Cloueton. London : William Blackwood and Sons. iMr. Clouston's irresistibly comic extravaganza of "The Lunatic at Large" has been a distinguished success, having jjac&ed throuch eaven or eight impressions, including the popular sixpenny form. Apparently, the public has displayed the appetite of Oliver Twist, for in "Count Bunker" the author has reintroduced his principal characters, in circumstances as wildly hilarious as on the former occasion. As before, the plot is arrant nonsense, and the fictitious count (Mr. ( Mandell-Easington) has not this time even the excuse of temporary mental aberration for his pranks and the wholesale and ingenious lying they incidentally involve. His friend the Baron yon Blitzenberg, having been now five years married, is appointed to a_ purely ornamental diplomatic position in London, and being idle and bored, desires to break loose for a while. Under the advice- of "Bunker," the ex-lunatic, he personates Lord Tulliwuddle, and pays a visit to his ancestral Highland estate, which the young man \has never seen, -.nd which is let to a Scottish gentleman who has an attractive daughter. Young Tulliwuddle agrees lo ihe arrangement, in order that he may the more freely pay his addresses to a chorus-girl of whom he is enimoured and whom he subsequently marries. Essington, as Count

Bunker, accompanies the Baron, who persuades the Baroness that he has gone to St. Petersburgp etersburg on a delicate diplomatic mission Tbo friends havo astonishing adventures in the Highlands. The spurious Tulliwuddle speaks with a pronounced German accent, and his modesty compels him to add a pair of trousers to the trarb of Old Gaul. An American millionaire and his family are in the district, and the susceptible . Baron impartially devotes himself in turn to the daughters of his host and of the capitalist. Complications, of course, soon arise, and thanks to the remarkable ingenuity of the author, the pair of impostors do not figure at the Old Bailey, though Blitzonberg pays ample penalty in another -way through the agency of his terrible mother-in-law. It requires more than common skill to carry such nonsense through successfully, and the author has just the skill required. The Rev. Sabine Baring Gould, whose death was lately reported, wrote : "The most pleasing letter of congratulation I have had is from the children of a national school in North Devon, at a place I have never visited. Some years ago I wrote a little hymn for that school at the request of tho master. I havo now received this letter : 'Wo were so sorry to hear from our master that you were dead, but we find this morning that you are alive. So wo can thank you now for the beautiful hymn you wrote for our school.' This was signed by all the children. I have found that peopl6 whom I did not know by name oven had cared for my writings, and they wrote or wired me their congratulations ; old pupils of forty years ago wrote and renewed old remombrances, friends who had dropped out of my life woke up to renewed affection. And so I find that I have more friends than I knew of and old friends draw closer, so that this little error has softened my heart, and made me thankful thai, I havo a wider circle of such as feel kindly towards mo than the little ring of my own family."