so learned
and weighty a treatise.

I am sure that Miss Constance Holme has, in _The Lonely Plough_ (Mills
and Boon), written a clever and amusing novel. What she has not done is
to make herself intelligible. Some of the mist that enwraps the
background of her frontispiece has obscured her story and her
characters. I know that she is writing about lively and entertaining
people because there emerges, now and then, a page of dialogue that is
witty and alive; and I know that her story is dramatic because she tells
us now that someone "let out a screech," and now that he "uttered sharp
little sounds remarkably like oaths." I know, too, that the sea is
encroaching upon somebody's dwelling-place, and that someone else tries
to keep the waves in their place, but is no more successful than was the
great King Knut of blessed memory. Then there is a fine figure of a
land-agent and several ladies who talk the snappiest of slang. But the
mist and the sea have swept across Miss Holme's pages and blotted out
the rest of the affair. Not Meredith nor Robert Browning at their most
complex have been more baffling. I must admit, however, that the
description of a game of mixed hockey, somewhere in the middle of the
book, was delightfully fresh and vivid. Here, for a page or two, I could
rest from my grapplings with the story and join in all the excitement
and peril, that mixed hockey provides. Then there is _Harriet_, who
says, "Stow all that piffle." I should like to know more about
_Harriet_, who from that brief glimpse of her seems a lively vigorous
person, but the encroaching sea swallows her with the others, and there
is an end. I repeat that Miss Holme has written a clever dramatic story,
but the title is certainly the clearest thing about it.

When Mr. Calthrop's at his best
He weaves you tales of fauns and elves,
And ancient gods come back to test
Their humour on our modern selves;
He finds romance in common clay;
He lifts the veil from fairy rings,
And points the unfamiliar way
Of looking at familiar things.

And at his second best, or less,
His graceful manner still redeems
With easy charm and cheerfulness
More hackneyed, less seductive themes;
Each page has something witty, wise,
Well-turned, fantastic or jocose--
Each page of _Breadandbutterflies_,
From Mills and Boon, six shillings (gross).

Even though it has been seared by the tragic end of a youthful _liaison