uneasily conscious of never having heard of him, inclines to condemn the whole business beforehand as an impossible fable.  I fancy Mr. SOMERSET MAUGHAM felt something of this difficulty with regard to the protagonist of his quaintly-called The Moon and Sixpence (HEINEMANN), since, for all his sly pretence of quoting imaginary authorities, we have really only his unsupported word for the superlative genius of Charles Strickland, the stockbroker who abandoned respectable London to become a Post-impressionist master, a vagabond and ultimately a Pacific Islander.  The more credit then to Mr. MAUGHAM that he does quite definitely make us accept the fellow at his valuation.  He owes this, perhaps, to the unsparing realism of the portrait.  Heartless, utterly egotistical, without conscience or scruple or a single redeeming feature beyond the one consuming purpose of his art, Strickland is alive as few figures in recent fiction have been; a genuinely great though repellent personality—­a man whom it would have been at once an event to have met and a pleasure to have kicked.  Mr. MAUGHAM has certainly done nothing better than this book about him; the drily sardonic humour of his method makes the picture not only credible but compelling.  I liked especially the characteristic touch that shows Strickland escaping, not so much from the dull routine of stockbroking (genius has done that often enough in stories before now) as from the pseudo-artistic atmosphere of a flat in Westminster and a wife who collected blue china and mild celebrities. Mrs. Strickland indeed is among the best of the slighter characters in a tale with a singularly small cast; though it is, of course, by the central figure that it stands or falls.  My own verdict is an unhesitating stet.

* * * * *

If there be any who still cherish a pleasant memory of the Bonnie Prince CHARLIE of the Jacobite legend, Miss MARJORIE BOWEN’S Mr. Misfortunate (COLLINS) will dispose of it.  She gives us a study of the YOUNG PRETENDER in the decade following Culloden.  Figures such as LOCHIEL, KEITH, GORING, the dour KELLY, HENRY STUART, LOUIS XV., with sundry courtiers and mistresses, move across the film.  I should say the author’s sympathy is with her main subject, but her conscience is too much for her.  I find myself increasingly exercised over this conscience of Miss BOWEN’S.  She seems to me to be deliberately committing herself to what I can only describe as a staccato method.  This was notably the case with The Burning Glass, her last novel.  Her narratives no longer seem to flow.  She will give you catalogues of furniture and raiment, with short scenes interspersed, for all the world as if she were transcribing from carefully taken notes.  Quite probably she is, and I am being authentically instructed and should be duly grateful, but I find myself longing for the exuberance of her earlier method.  I feel quite sure this competent author can find a way of respecting historical truth without killing the full-blooded flavour of romance.