BOOKS & AUTHORS.

Dominion, Volume 8, Issue 2360, 16 January 1915, Page 5

BOOKS & AUTHORS.

SOME RECENT FICTION.

£BY liber.)

PRINCE AND HERETIC. Miss Marjorio llowon has mado notable progress in tier art since, but .a few years ago,, slio gavo us that crudo but dramatically powerful novel, "Tho Vipor of Milan." For some time slio has specialised in Dutch and Flemish history, moro especially tho lil'o and doings of William of Orange. Ilor latest story, "Princo and Heretic" (Motliuoii) introduces us to tho gallant young of Orange in the earlier stages ol' his groat career. Wo see him marrying tho deformed, elfish Anno of Saxony, who, in years to corno, was to bo unfaithful to him with a Brussols lawyer, Jau liubei)6, father of tho great and oiijy Pieler Paul llubens, whoso "Descent from tho Cross" hangs in Antwerp Cathedral. Wo witness his transformation from an easy-going, luxurious youiig gallant into a man of action, a statesman, a warrior, defying Alva and Cardinal Granvello and all tho might of Spain, and road of his ardour in tho field, and al;u> tho defeat of his own and his brother's armies, and, finally, of his escape to France, whither, at the close of the book, we fiufl him travelling to join the heroic Comic and the Huguenots. The later stages of his romantic and famous career will, it is understood, bo traced ill a. sequel. Meanwhile wo may study in this excellent story the beginnings of the great revolt of which Motley has left so splendid a record in his famous ".Rise of the Dutch Republic." We see the Spanish Inquisition at its hollish work. We stand in imagination in the market-place of Brussols whilo Egmont and Hoorn go to their doom; we witness in imagination deeds as ruthlessly cruel as those by which the German troops of to-day are rivalling the evil reputation of Alva's bloodthirsty ruffians: here is tlie panorama of Flemish *nd Dutch national history unveiled in fictional guise, it is a fane ; intereetcompelling' study, one peculiarly suitable for present-day leading, and well maintaining its author's now well-estab-lished reputation as a writer of historical fiction.

THE CAME OF LIFE AND DEATH. Lincoln Colcord, tho author of "The Game of Life and Death —Stories of the Sea" (Macmillau and Co.) i 6 an American author whose short stories, mainly of seafaring adventure in this Pacific and the Far East, have won their writer considerable popularity with the magazine-reading public of the United States. The title 'story of the present collection has'for its motif a game of pqker played by one Lee Fu Chang, a Chinese trader, of Singapore, who gambles for his own life and that of his European captain friend with the leader of a gang of bloodthirsty Chinese privates. Another sketch, "De Long, a Story of Sunda Straits," is quite in the Conrad vein, and in "Thirst, air Incident of the Pacific," Mr. Colcord has written a poignantly dramatic 6ketcli of a sea tragedy. Yet again, in "The Moths," the author gives U6 a weird and thrilling story, that of a hermitlike European derelict oil an island in the Java Sea, who is driven to madness and death by giant moths, which, so the madman imagines, are tenanted by the 6ouls of women bent on avenging the death of. a girl whom the eufforer has years ago wronged. It is a horrible but fascinating story, a study in tho psychology of human terror as convincing in its way as, say, Kipling's "At the End of the. Passage, or that equally powerful and dreadful story "The Mark of the Beast." . Mr. Colcord is clearly a master of the short story. -I shall Icok : forward with in-, terest to future work from hiß 'pen;

the honourable percival. By the ingenuous members of the Home Reading Circle of Oshkosh (Mich.) or the Ella Wheeler Wilcox Culture Club of Squashville (Kan.), such a caricature portrait as "The Honourable Percival," by Alice Hcgan Rice (Hodden and Stoughton, per S. M. Mackav) .will no doubt be accepted as a remarkably accurate and intensely witty presentmena of a typical young English aristocrat. The author of "Mrs.Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch," which in its own limited way, was a fairly humorous production, makes a young travelling Englishman the butt of tho ship on which he is voyaging from 'Frisco to Japan, and gets some cheap fun out of his quite harmless peculiarities of manner, even the, captain, who ought to know better, openly ridiculing the young man, who falls in love with a jolly little girl, fresh from .the' cattlepunching plains of Wyoming, who is under tno skipper's care. The captain is never so happy as when sneering at or openly abusing Englishmen and everything English. Tho humours of an ocean voyage are' described with a certain vivacity, but the story as a whole is weak and ■unconvincing, and its republication" in England is somewhat surprising. In Oshkosh (Mich.) and Squashville (Kan.) "The Honourable Percival" will be deemed no doubt a "really elegant" story. But such piffle is quite unworthy of the pen which gave us the inimitable "Mrs. Wiggs." | "IN SELF DEFENCE." Like all Silas K. Hocking's stories, "Self Defence" (Ward, Lock and Co., per Whitcombe and Tombs) is readable enough in its way. It is fiction of the kinematograph class, with a stagey baronet as villain of the piece, and a handsome young hero as a jcune premier, frhose proper place is in old-time melodrama. In his love-making episodes Mr. Hocking bids fair to oufc-Garvice the great and only Charles of that ilk. As for example: "Mean it? Oh, Eileen, is it possible?" "Now I am the happiest girl on earth," she laughed. "You ?"

' Yes, I. Oh, Basil!" and she aropped on her knees by his chair and laid her faco against his shoulder. A great stillness iky upoa the land, broken only by the clicking of a reaping machine in a distant field. For a whilo neither of them spoke again, _ Ho could hear the beating of his heart j hoar almost the beating of her's. • "Let mo look at you/' he whispered at length. "Lot me see your eyes." "Tell me first," she almost sobbed, "that you are sure you are not mistaken." "Sure? Oh, Eileen, I wish I were as sure of heaven. I have loved .you since that day I took your cold hands in mine. Do you remember?" "A3 if I could ever forget," she whispered, with her faco still bidden." And so on, and so on. for a. couple of pages. Same old Hocking. "THE LURE OF ROMANCE." The scene of Mr. H. F. Prevost Battcrsby's latest story, "The Lure of Romance" (John Lane) is a Central American State, whoso President, an andacious and unscrupulous Yankee adventurer, finds himself threatened by a revolution, the people of Sovara very naturally objecting to their ruler speculating with—and, worse still—losing a million or so of public money. But the President lias two lovely daughters and two wealthy and adventurous young Britons, plus their old school chum, Do.yne, who is constructing the Sovara waterworks, deem it their duty to take a hand in the row which ensues. The author, who lias acted as a war correspondent in bis time, gives a dramatic and exciting description of how a Central American revolution,, not al-

ways as bloodless an event ns » Vrom:h duel, is curried out, i\nd lins drawn n fine character slmtoh in the Imnl-htmdcil young engineer, who cim lie a s (limbing a lover as ho is culm iiikl, determinedly plucky ns a fighter. A vevv readable novel, spocially rich in novo! and brilliant local colour.