Monthly Slender But Good

Small quantity and good quality in the current Monthly make the reviewer's task easy.

Mr. Cuthbert Wright contributes under the title "The Gospel According to George Moore," a brief discussion of the novelist's daring "The Brook Kerith." The world is probably divided into two groups: the people who are bound to be shocked by the book and the people who are naturally disposed to be deeply interested by it. Mr. Wright is of the latter group. His praise is nevertheless discriminating, and he deals sympathetically with the qualities in the author that enable him to see ancient Syria through modern eyes.

Then there is Mr. Paulding's "Ogdensburg Carnival," brief, elaborate and grotesque. Mr. Paulding's senses have registered many quaint experiences, and his pen has at times achieved a mannered felicity.

In "Cadet Basis," Mr. Nelson writes breezily of Plattsburg and succeeds in packing a great many reminiscences into his six pages. The atmosphere is true to life in every detail; but if Mr. Nelson had gone to the August camp he would have had no boiled fish.

Mr. Whittlesey's interesting "Travler," a tramp, seems also to have been drawn from life. At any rate, we seem to recognize the sort of road-side philosophy that he discourses, even if it is hard to reconcile ideas and vocabulary.

The verse in the number is remarkably mature in thought and able in workmanship. Four of the poems are sonnets; of these two are a subtly matched pair by Mr. Reniers; the others by Henderson and Mr. Le Farge, treat in different moods the idea of death. Mr. Norris writes "Lines" of epigrammatic brevity and point. "From an Office Window at night" is Mr. Allinson's expression of revolt on the part of the city worker whose imagination carries him far away. Mr. Paulding's verse is tense and irregular; unlike many contemporary writers of tense and irregular verse, he is wise enough not to expand his theme unduly.

The editorials and the book reviews are readable and sane. Altogether, this number of the Monthly goes toward justifying its rather ambitious "Foreword"; perhaps future numbers will be less slender.