BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

Evening Star, Issue 11434, 29 December 1900, Page 1

BOOKS AND BOOKMEN.

' The Stickit Minister's Wooing.' By & R. Crockett, London, Hodder and troughton: Dunedin, Whitcoinbc and Tombs, Limited. Critics may reprove Mr Crockett for his exceeding haste and prolific output, but the great bulk of the reading public will, we are inclined to think, always buy his works and read themwith pleasure so long as lliey maintain the high level of literary power which, some eight years ago, in 'The Stickit Minister,' first took the world by storm. For ourselves, we think that his chief fault is the most obvious hurry displayed in all the last chapters 'of his works. They give the impression that he is in haste to'finish and get on to something else. Even whilst reading the present series of talcs we hnp-pc-ned across a bookseller's catalogue in which two other books from Mr Crockett's pen were announced, and each of which had received high encomiums from the critics. However, (lie fact remains that Crockett is worth reading. Nor is the secret of his success hard to guess. He is human, natural, humorous, clean. His "kailyard" novels treat of men and women as they are, and introduce us to pure, lovable, common sense young women, and to manly, healthy, ordinary heroes. There are wit, fun, pathos m abundance, but we have not the absurc custom of introducing titled puppets and making them talk in epigrams that have been laboriously concocted in the studv; nor have we, whilst being introduced to the lowly life of (lie Scotch peasantry in all its simplicity, the revolting and 'nauseating realism of 'La Terre.' Crockett's tales are good, emphatically good, reading, and he is, in our judgment, in the very front rank of stoiy-tellers of to-day. The'present volume has much that will cause honest laughter, genuine interest, and, perhaps, a few tears, whilst the.preface, dealing as it does with the late Louis Stevenson and his correspondence with Crockett, will be of interest to those with whom Stevenson's name stand* for so much in modem literature. Tho latter is certainly a recognised master among and by the "ci<aft,' ? whatever he may as a novelist be considered bv the public.