(By Mr. Punch's Staff of Learned Clerks.)

Generally speaking, stories left unfinished because of the death of the writer in mid course can only be at best an uncomfortable, exasperating legacy to his admirers. But by a thrice happy chance this is not the case with the two novels upon which the late HENRY JAMES was engaged at the time of his fatal illness. This good fortune comes from the fact that it was the writer's habit "to test and explore," in a written or dictated sketch, the possible developments of any theme before embarking upon its treatment in detail. I get the phrase "test and explore," than which there could be no better, from the brief preface to the volume now before me, The Ivory Tower (COLLINS). It exactly suggests the method of this preliminary study, doubly precious now, both as supplying the key by which we can understand the fragment that has been worked out, and as in itself giving us a glimpse, wonderfully fascinating, of its evolution. The Ivory Tower (called so characteristically after an object whose bearing upon the intrigue is of the slightest) is a study of wealth in its effect upon the mutual relations of a small group of persons belonging to the plutocracy of pre-war America. Its special motive was to be a development of situation as between a young legatee, in whom the business instinct is entirely wanting, and his friend and adviser, whom he was presently to detect in dishonest dealing, yet refrain from any act of challenge that would mean exposure. "Refrain"—does this not give you in one word the whole secret of what would have been a study in character and emotion obviously to the taste of the writer? For itself, and still more for the glimpse of what it was to become, The Ivory Tower must have a place in every collection where the unmatchable wit of HENRY JAMES is honoured as it should be.

Something less successful perhaps for itself, though even more absorbing technically, is the volume containing the unfinished fragment of another HENRY JAMES novel, to be called The Sense of the Past (COLLINS). Here especially it is the preliminary study that furnishes the chief interest; the spectacle of this so-skilled craftsman struggling to master an idea that might well, I think, have been found later too unsubstantial, too subtly fantastic, for working out. Very briefly, the theme is to treat of a young American, in whom this "Sense of the Past" is all-powerful; whom the gift of an old London house and its furnishings enables to transport himself bodily into the life of 1820. More than this, he lives that life (and it is here that one suspects the idea of becoming unmanageable) in the person of an actual youth of that time, in whom a corresponding Sense of the Future has been so strong that he has answered the curiosity of his descendant by an exchange of personalities. Of course the dangers and confusions of the plan, a kind of psychological version of one often used in farce (except that it precisely wasn't to be any manner of dream), are such as might well alarm any writer—and, one might add, any reader also. It is a further misfortune that the style of what is actually written should be in the master's most remote and obscure manner, so much so that one is forced to wonder whether, without the notes as guide, it would be in any sort clear what the whole thing was about. The transition, for example, from the actual to the supernatural event is so abrupt that it might well have left the uninformed helplessly befogged. But this very fact again, as supposing some further treatment only now to be guessed at, helps to make the unique fascination of the book as revealing the difficulties and rewards of letters.

Whatever Mr. ERNEST THOMPSON SETON cares to write I am glad to read, but there were moments in The Preacher of Cedar Mountain (HODDER AND STOUGHTON) when the great moral lesson of the story was as much as I could bear. The tale reveals the spiritual and moral development of Jim Hartigan. The author assures us that most of the characters are drawn from life, and that some of the main events are historical. All which I can easily believe, for Mr. SETON'S blunt method of describing Jim Hartigan's evolution from an unhallowed stable-boy to a muscular Christian continually suggests reality. It is not a stylish method, but it gets home, and in a tale of this kind that is the main, if not the only, matter of importance. Jim's besetting weaknesses were drink and an overwhelming love for horses. The former he conquered fairly soon, but the latter tripped him up more than once, and if he had not been guided by the wisest woman who ever came from the West his end would have been chaotic. The races at Fort Ryan are excellently described, and as a picture of the West of America some forty years ago you will find this story of Jim's conversion both instructive and intriguing. All the same Mr. SETON has so often delighted me by his tales of the animal world that I hope this excursion is merely a holiday from the work for which he has a real genius.

Up to the present time the crop of German spy-stories has been distinguished by quantity rather than by quality. Possibly the authors, realising that the wildest flights of their highly-trained fancies could never match the actual machinations of the German Secret Service as revealed in the official news, have not put their hearts into the work. In The Lost Naval Papers and other stories (MURRAY) Mr. BENNET COPPLESTONE has shown unusual boldness in connecting the activities of his super-policeman, Dawson, with the more prominent events of the War. Indeed, I am not sure that the terror he professes to feel in the presence of the Scotland Yard official (for he tells his stories in propria persona) is not to some extent justified. "Dora" is very sensitive and six months ago would never have permitted Mr. COPPLESTONE to reveal to our enemies either the bumptious egoism of a nameless First Lord or the platitudinous vacillations of an anonymous Premier, even in the interests of popular fiction. Though we concede his audacity in allowing his superlative sleuth to stop a general strike of engineers by threatening them with martial law and to tempt the German fleet to come out by sending it false news of our battleship strength, or to enable the battle of the Falkland Islands to be won by piling dummy battle cruisers up outside Plymouth harbour, the merit of Mr. COPPLESTONE'S book does not lie in the complexity or vitality of his plots. It lies in a keen sense of humour and clever character suggestion, and the recognition that the thing written about is of less importance than the manner of writing. We earnestly desire that Mr. COPPLESTONE should devote another volume—a whole one—to the inimitable Madame Guilbert; but whatever he writes about will be welcome, provided it be written in the vein of the volume before us.

Out of such workaday elements as the hypnotic fascinations of a sleek music-master, the follies of a runaway schoolgirl and the well-disciplined affections of a most superior young gentleman, Mr. W.E. NORRIS has contrived to create yet another new story, without infringement of his own or anyone else's copyright. Thanks to the incidence of War and the author's skilful manipulation of Europe's distresses (for once the KAISER'S intrusion into the middle of a peaceful—almost too peaceful—narrative is not unwelcome), the second half of The Fond Fugitives (HUTCHINSON) is better than the first. Not, indeed, that such a wary hand as the writer has been so ill-advised as to follow his hero to Flanders, or even to let his heroine do so; but his wounded soldier, come home with sympathy and understanding grown big enough to realise that a girl, though indiscreet once, may yet be adorable ever after, is certainly more to one's taste than the philanderer about town, admiring other men's wives, in July, 1914. And so the story, slight though it is, ends on a strong note and with fair hope of happiness for two wiser and not much sadder people. Some of the minor characters are quite capitally drawn, particularly the old father and mother in pathetic flight before the shadow of their daughter's disgrace; but it is the freshness of the heroine herself, outraging all tradition by refusing, though without bravado, to remain for ever in the gloom of a childish error, that one likes to remember. Altogether, the author's friends will find this book not at all below the level of his best work.

Small Craft (ELKIN MATTHEWS), by Miss C. FOX SMITH, contains several poems that have appeared in Punch over the initials "C.F.S." They should receive a fresh welcome from all who share her understanding of the ways of seafaring men, and from the larger public that is beginning to appreciate the gallantry and devotion of our Merchant Service.

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