LORD BYRON'S HOUSE ANOTHER literary landmark of London will disappear when the buildingwreckers attack Byron's old house at No. 8 St. James's Street, which the poet first occupied in October 1811, after finishing the cantos of Childe Harold on his Continental travels. The poet had already lived for a short time two years before in this same house.

The house has a number of odd features. Of them all, perhaps the oddest is the staircase built in a spiral shaft clear up to the roof, but of such diminutive proportions that a goodsized chair can hardly be carried up it. Apparently most of the poet's furniture came in via the windows. The front is very narrow, yet the rooms are pleasant and spacious, a result achieved by the architect only at the expense of the staircase. The house stands on Crown land, and the owners of the building which will replace it are to be compelled to insert on the new façade the marble medallion of Lord Byron now standing on his old house.

A fire on the right of the house cleared the way for the new building, and the new owner of 7, 8, and 9, which all stand on the same side of the street, proposes to raze them all and erect a modern building which will rise six

stories in the air. It will continue what an English journalist refers to as 'the skyline of tall structures' along St.

James's Street. This demolition almost entirely alters the appearance of the street as Byron knew it. Boodle's Club is still there, and so is Lock's Hat-shop, which occupies a low Georgian house; but except for these there is practically nothing.

FUTURISTS AND FASCISTS

F. T. MARINETTI, the Italian poet, and his followers have called upon Mussolini to give the futurists preference in all artistic commissions, exhibitions, and orders under State patronage. The futurists demand triumphant entrée to international exhibits and insist that their art is to rule supreme in La Scala Theatre in Milan. They insist upon preference for their paintings and musical compositions over the works of foreign artists, and demand banks of credit for art like the credit banks open to meeting the needs of trade and industry. One trembles to think what a futurist poet could do to a State bank-account. The insurgent artists, however, profess themselves satisfied with the Premier's attitude toward their views, and the support he has promised them.

Man and the Attainment of Immortality, by J. Y. Simpson. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1923. 78. 6d. net.

[Bookman]

THE plain man or woman who 'knows and knows no more his (her) Bible true,' believes that immortality belongs to all human souls, and that the only problem is how that immortality is to be spent. Some thinkers are found, however, who regard immortality as something to be won. If they be right, those who do not attain immortality must cease to be: a startling application of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest. This theory of conditional immortality raises so many puzzling questions that we welcome a treatise that deals with the matter from all points of view. Dr. Simpson writes as a man of science, but he cannot help writing also as a theologian: his subject compels him. Some may even complain that his book falls into two independent parts - a scientific and a theological. Some will even ask contemptuously what Neanderthal skulls have to do with the Day of Judgment or the immortality of the soul.

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In any case the plain man will read with interest the first half of the book, even though he finds some difficulty in getting into touch with the various forms of life that are presented to him under unfamiliar technical names. The matter is interesting in itself, and fosters the impression of an unbroken development up to the present time, with the suggestion that the future will continue the uninterrupted succession. Dr. Simpson occasionally makes in his second part a definite reference to facts detailed in the first. But with the best will in the world to regard the book as a unity, the reader cannot help feeling that he is having matters presented to him from two different points of view. The scientific and the theological remain stubbornly apart, and of the two the theological dominates.

Psychology and Politics, by W. H. R. Rivers. London: Kegan Paul, 1923. 10s. 6d.

[Labour Magazine]

THESE essays bring home afresh the loss sustained by the death of the brilliant scholar who accepted nomination as Labor candidate for London University and died before the General Election. Working along the same line of thought pursued by Professor Graham Wallas, Dr. Rivers illumines many problems of social and political behavior, including that of the bureaucrat, swathed in red tape, and of the

owner of property, in these studies of psychology and ethnology. The volume contains a biographical memoir by Dr. C. S. Myers, which shows how deeply Rivers influenced the development of the science he made his special study; and Dr. Eliot Smith, who edits the volume, contributes both a Preface and a Note to the lecture on the aims of ethnology.

Bibliographical Survey of Contemporary Sources for the Economic and Social History of the War, by M. E. Bulkley. London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1923.

[Outlook]

THE Division of Economics and History of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has undertaken the publication of an extensive series of monographs in which some attempt will be made 'to measure the economic cost of the war and the displacement which it was causing in the processes of civilization.' For an undertaking like this it is of primary importance that all the data should be made easily accessible, and so one of the first volumes in the series is a bibliography. The mass of material bearing on the subject is almost inexhaustible. The present volume deals only with the United Kingdom; it is merely a selection, but even so covers 629 columns.

The introduction states: 'Owing to the circumstances of the time-the Defense of the Realm Regulations, which severely restricted the publication of information, the scarcity of paper (especially toward the end of the war), and the absorption of the greater part of the nation in practical and strenuous work which allowed little leisure for the recording of facts and impressions- the literature for the period is unfortunately in many directions meagre.' This was, perhaps, fortunate, for, had it not been the case, the literature would have become completely unmanageable. Miss Bulkley, the compiler of the bibliography, is to be congratulated on the way in which she has accomplished her task, and the publishers on the clear type and neat arrangement.

Black, White, and Brindled, by Eden Phillpotts. London: Grant Richards, 1923. 7s. 6d. nct.

[English Review]

In this set of tales Mr. Phillpotts steps westward with a vengeance; like the great West Countrymen before him, he has heard the call of the Spanish Main and sailed for plunder into

the Caribbean Sea. He must have gone after the fashion of 'Polly' to join an old love in the West Indies, for this is no mere tourist smattering of technicalities and backgrounds; had he been a sugar-planter all his life, instead of a (literary) territorial magnate, he could scarcely give us a more familiar set of pictures. His niggers, skippers, and creoles are the real thing, and there is tropic sun and tropic mystery in the stories themselves a surprising tour de force revealing another new facet to a mind with every excuse to be subdued like the dyer's hand.

"The Three Dead Men,' which begins this set of seven, is a most original detective tale, in which the emissary from England is baffled, and the master mind at home excogitates the truth - a subtly done bit of work. The other stories give us plenty of thrills, arising from the reactions of the three colors, black, white, and brindled, upon each other's lives; and each of them is an excellently found and pleasantly told little novel. Sugar, niggers, planters, skippers and seamen, Barbados, Tobago, Trinidad, Grenada, the Virgin Islands, strange fruit and flowers, humming birds and snakes splendid pigments for these well-limned bits of life.

Tennyson: A Modern Portrait, by Hugh L'Anson Fausset. London: Selwyn and Blount, 1923. 12s. 6d.

[Edmund Gosse in the Sunday Times]

By a notable coincidence, the silence which has gathered during the past decade around the fame of Tennyson is broken at the same moment by two young critics of distinction. It is more than probable that Mr. Nicolson and Mr. Fausset would prefer to hold the field alone, and that to each the presence of the other is vexatious:

So have I seen, on Afric's burning shore,
Two hungry lions give a dreadful roar,
And the first lion thought the last a bore.

But Mr. Fausset and Mr. Nicolson may console themselves by reflecting that their simultaneous appearance will create more sensation than the solitary entry of either could cause, and that their rivalry will emphasize attention to their subject, which is what each of them desires. It is high time that the position of

Tennyson, who has been dead for more than thirty years, should be reviewed, and, if necessary, revised. The adulation which surrounded his latest years was preposterous, and could only herald a reaction, which in fact was very speedily apparent. A good deal of nonsensical panegyric was succeeded by at least an equal amount of rude detraction.

Mr. Fausset is angry that the attacks on the poet by the very young should be attributed to 'dissolute caprice.' However that may be, it is very interesting to learn what is the opinion of two well-equipped and sincere young critics on a subject which they approach from opposite points of view. Mr. Nicolson and Mr. Fausset have little in common except their conscientious desire to present Tennyson to us without prejudice and with adequate care. We do not ask for 'reverent panegyric,' which is always an intolerable nuisance, but just as little are we willing to tolerate the insolence of ignorance. Neither has any place in the temperate and candid pages of Mr. Fausset and Mr. Nicolson.

An unavoidable feature of the two books, which becomes slightly annoying as we read them together, is the fact that each is built up in the recognized form of a critical biography. This is certainly the best way of constructing a literary life, but in the present case it has the accidental inconvenience of leading to a great deal of repetition. Mr. Nicolson and Mr. Fausset weave over again the familiar tissue of Tennyson's career, and much of it must needs be the same in each example. Both biographers tell their tale picturesquely; Mr. Fausset is the more satirical, Mr. Nicolson the more sympathetic, but both are sound historians.

Mr. Fausset does not seem to have revised his book quite as carefully as he might; the incessant misspelling of the name of Edward FitzGerald is exasperating. I am puzzled by the mention of 'Brookfield Blakesly' (sic) as an early friend of Tennyson; is not this a confusion between two persons, J. W. Blakesley, afterward Dean of Lincoln, and W. H. Brookfield? I have noted none of these snags in the smoother current of Mr. Nicolson. Mr. Fausset, who concentrates his attention on the personal character of his subject, isolates Tennyson from his surroundings; Mr. Nicolson, who is more literary in his objective, displays him, especially at the outset, against the background of his times. There is much to be said for either method.