REVIEWER FINDS LATEST NUMBER OF ADVOCATE LIVELY

This is a lively issue of the Advocate. We come to it indifferent, skeptical, almost--languid; we leave it with a sense of nervous quickening and clarity.

Nothing is quite so deadly as the chuckle, the smirk, suppressed or unsuppressed, which some of our current "literature" renders illustrious. That is why we are thankful for the Advocate. There is here no "attempt" at anything, not even a momentary toying with nuance and innuendo and theatricality. To be sure, one finds it picturesque to straddle the fence and bury one's head in the sand, all at a breath; but one also finds it invariably fatal.

Definiteness, then, of the kind that neither insinuates, nor reeks with, a purpose; tonicity, straight, penetrating, exuberant as a March wind--these qualities put all the pages of the Advocate in motion. From the brief "Conversation between Two Eminent British Authors", which clamors for quotation:

"I seek earth's greatest man, no less,"

Said G. K. C. to G. B. S.

"Don't you suppose that might be me?"

Said G. B. S. to G. K. C.

to the spirited, if abrupt, review of Mr. Mencken's new anthology of Prejudices, the magazine makes healthful music. The Editorials reveal a temperate pulse; they concern undergraduates; they do not fall to charm our graver blood. And though we miss the Brief Case, with its crisp, incisive commentary on Harvard happenings, there is no pause.

Stories Lack Momentum

For the stories provide in narrative warmth what they lack in momentum. We applaud Mr. Morrison's "The Point of the Joke." Freshly conceived, acutely observant, on speaking terms with earth and eccentricity, the story steps with an easy twinkle. But "Old Dawson's Jumping-Off Place," by Mr. Burden, while it contains passages of imaginative glow and dramatic fire, strains plausibility. Even the sub-title, "From an Alaskan Diary", does not entirely persuade us. The "one last, single, long-drawn howl" is too much for us. We receive without accepting. And so of Mr. Whitman's "Shadows of Our Fancy": more poetry than truth, magnificent settings and colorless characters; the shuttle of narrative weaves a gorgeous milieu--and nothing happens.

However, in his "Extracts from the Poetry of Chi Lao", Mr. Whitman challenges achievement. These are Whit manifestly not Chinese: but they are the stuff of poetry. Mr. R. C. Rogers in his "Sonnet" fingers an incoherent loveliness. The octave speaks of "chords that bind", an unfortunate ambiguity; the sestet hovers momentaly on the threshold of beauty; but the poem as a whole is tenuous and inarticulate. The "Winter Night's Spell" of Mr. Best plucks an old lute. We cannot help wishing there were more lines like these:

"A drowsy firmament of nodding stars;

Smooth shadow-backs of hills;

Frost-flavored air . . ."

Mr. Wooldridge's "Sea Fantasie" fulfills its title. Without particular pattern, it is a chaos of clear ideas, a dream-fugue. For that very reason it succeeds. The "Rondel" and the "Answer to my Rondel" of Mr. Dobson, by their delicate felicity elude comment. Gentle craftsmanship linked with an alertly shy fancy, not mere prettiness, but poetry that whispers--this is Mr. Dobson's province.

New Column--"Sketches"

Though we suspect the new column called "Sketches" of being Editorials transposed, we are none the less delighted. Certainly such reminiscences as these are memorable:

"The more I think of Buskirk, the more I realize that he was inescapably a gentleman." His voice was "so free from affectation that it sounded affected." And at the lecture by Professor X he would ask gravely, "What are notes?"

The second sketch, "Insomnia," is a local version of the "City of Dreadful Night" before those "damned exams!" We shudder our admiration.

With the Book Reviews which, in the hands of Mr. Beidler and (should we say hoofs?) of Pegasus, touch brilliance, the March Advocate comes to a close. There has been no breaking up of the tiresome old heavens, no cracking of barriers; there has been only a realization of cordial values in the sameness of things, only a new adventure into the sturdy air of home.