em the
utmost assistance in their power, there seems every reason to suppose that
within the next year the City of Birmingham will be the proud possessor of
the largest mound of villainously bad literature in the English-speaking
world. Pilgrims will go to see it who on no other account would have gone
to Birmingham; historians will refer to it when endeavouring to prove that
their own ages are superior to ours in intelligence; authors will inspect
it when seeking the consoling assurance that far, far worse things than
they have ever done have got into public libraries and been seriously
catalogued. The enterprise, in fact, is likely to be of service to several
classes of our fellow-citizens; and it cannot, as far as I am able to see,
do harm to any. It should therefore be encouraged, and I recommend anyone
who has volumes of war-verse which he wishes to get rid of to send them
off at once to the Chief Librarian of Birmingham."

Oh, yes! _Books in General_, _Third Series_, is by Solomon Eagle. Mr.
Squire explains that the pen name Solomon Eagle has no excuse. The
original bearer of the name was a poor maniac who, during the Great Plague
of London, used to run naked through the streets with a pan of coals of
fire on his head crying, "Repent, repent."

Too late I realise my wrongdoing, for what, after all, is _Books in
General_ as compared to Mr. Squire's _Life and Letters_? As a
divertissement, compared to a tone poem; as a curtain-raiser to a
three-act play. _Life and Letters_, though not lacking in the lighter
touches of Mr. Squire's fancy, contains chapters on Keats, Jane Austen,
Anatole France, Walt Whitman, Pope and Rabelais of that more considered
character one expects from the editor of the London Mercury. This is not
to say that these studies are devoid of humour; and those chapters in the
volume which are in the nature of interludes are among the best Mr. Squire
has written. Unfortunately I have left myself no room to quote the
incomparable panegyric (in the chapter on "Initials") to the name of John.
Read it, if your name is John; you will thank me for bringing it to your
attention.

=vi=

One expects personality in the daughter of Margot Asquith, and the readers
of the first book by Princess Antoine Bibesco (Elizabeth Asquith) were not
disappointed. The same distinction and the same unusual personality will
be found in her new book, _Balloons_. Princess Bibesco's _I Have Only
Myself to Blame_ consisted of