didn't know which of
them she wanted. I speak lightly, but, if you think all this made
for comedy, your conception of Miss MEYNELL's methods is very much
at fault. Love to her is very much what it was to _Patience_ in the
opera--by no means a wholly enviable boon. I can hardly praise too
much the exquisite refinement and restraint of her treatment of
commonplace things. But one small point baffled me: _Oliver_ appears
to have been a professional diver and bath-keeper--we are told,
indeed, that he had occupied that position at Rugby (a statement
that I have private and personal reasons for discrediting)--yet we
find him staying as a welcome and honoured guest in the house of the
_Rutherglens_, whom I take to be more or less "county." Surely this,
though of no real importance, is at least remarkable?

* * * * *

"What," I asked myself, "is just the matter with this apparently quite
nice book?" (It was _Joan's Green Year_, and written by E.L. DOON and
published by MACMILLAN.) It is the kind of book that grows out of a
romantic disposition and an assiduously stuffed commonplace book. It
consists of letters from _Joan_, a paying guest in the Manor House
Farm at Pelton, to her brother _Keith_, a soldier in India, telling
him all about her year of holiday and "soul discipline" in the
country, the village gossip, her proposals and her one acceptance, and
giving a sort of farmer's calendar of the seasons as interpreted by
the guileless amateur. _Joan_ has what is known as a nice mind. But
to tell truth she has chosen a difficult and dangerous if alluring art
form. Of course letters enable you to evade some of the difficulties
of the novelist's task, to be discursive, allusive and incomplete. But
you can't be let off anything of the precision and subtlety of your
characterisation. On the contrary. And _Joan_ makes everyone in Pelton
(except the rustics, whose authenticity I gravely suspect) talk
as _Joan_ writes. They have nearly all seen her commonplace book,
I judge. Then, again, you must not have (like _Joan_) a large list
of acquaintances, or you breed confusion and dissipate interest
accordingly. _Joan_ is very young in many ways. She is extravagant in
the matter of the equipment of her heroes. _Bob Ingleby_, the farmer
(a gentleman, because he had been at Winchester), is a "great comely
giant," yet wins events one and three of the Hunt Steeplechase, though
thrown badly in number two. I have