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I have to begin by confessing that, despite its most attractive title, my first glance into French Windows (ARNOLD) produced in me some feeling of prejudice.  It was not that I failed to recognise both dignity and beauty of phrase in the writing; on the contrary, I told myself that “Mr. JOHN AYSCOUGH” had been betrayed by his own appreciation of beautiful phrases into an indulgence in “style,” a deliberate arrangement of his war-pictures that was somehow out of harmony with the stark and horrible simplicity of their subject.  But I hasten to make confession that this was but a passing and, I am convinced, a wrong judgment.  Indeed, the abiding impression that the book has left upon me is one of enormous sincerity.  Both as a soldier and a priest, the writer enjoyed (as his publishers quite justly say) special opportunities for getting into touch with men of all sorts and conditions.  This, aided by his own gift of sympathy and comradeship, has resulted in a book that is very largely a record of fleeting but genuine friendships, made with individual soldiers, both French and English, in the Western battle.  Many of them contain portraits and character-studies (a pedantic term for anything so sensitive and sympathetic as these tributes to nameless heroes, but I can find no better) that linger in the memory.  I defy you, for example, to forget soon the story of that winter walk taken by the writer and certain officer-boys of his unit to the Cistercian Monastery, and what Chutney said by the way; and what happened afterwards.  For the sake of such sincere and memorable sketches as this I am more than ready to forgive what seemed like a touch of artifice elsewhere.

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Mr. GEORGE MOORE, continuing his labours as reviser and editor-in-chief of the Moorish masterpieces, has now directed his attention to A Modern Lover.  Finding this (presumably) not modern enough, he has refashioned and republished it under the admirably comprehensive title of Lewis Seymour and Some Women (HEINEMANN).  Not having the original at hand, I am unable to indulge in comparisons; but there seems good reason to suppose that Lewis Seymour’s relations with the three amiable ladies who assist his artistic and amatory career remain very much what they probably were in the beginning.  As for the tale itself, that too will hardly belie your expectation, being full of cleverness, carried off with an infectious gaiety, and boasting (I use the word advisedly) more than a sufficiency of that rather assertive and school-boy impropriety which the charitable might quote as evidence of our author’s perpetual youth.  It is an interesting, though perhaps futile, speculation to reflect how Mr. THOMAS HARDY, to whose plots the present bears some resemblance, might have handled it.  Had Lewis Seymour pursued his education in womanhood under the guidance of the wizard of Dorchester there would probably have been less of the atmosphere of holiday humour; but, on the other hand, we should almost certainly have been spared the quite superfluous naughtiness of the Parisian scenes.  By the way, talking of Paris, surely I am right in supposing that the vision of a revived Versailles was an experience of two ladies?  It is unexpected to find Mr. MOORE denying anything to “the sex.”