Given Dr. Cronin's considerable reputation and some fourteen titles on which it is based, [A Song of Sixpence] obviously requires a notice. It does not, however, deserve one. For this is a bad book, not in the sense of being a good book that has failed, but in the sense of being a second-rate book that does not meet the requirements of its lower estate. And the reason for this has something to do with the matters of honesty and sentiment, or—more simply—with honest sentimentality.

The reader is told (on the book jacket, it is true, but in the author's words) that "of all my novels … A Song of Sixpence is to me … the real thing." Further, the author speaks of being "deeply moved" and "carried away" by the narrative because here he "was truly expressing" himself. One takes it, then, that Cronin sees his book...