DELAYED ACTION

New Zealand Listener, Volume 19, Issue 489, 5 November 1948, Page 20

DELAYED ACTION

THE DAWN’S DELAY. By Hugh Kingsmill. Eyre and Spottiswoode. HIS is a reprint of two books which Hugh Kingsmill published respectively in 1924, and 1929. To the three long short stories, or very short novels, of The Dawn’s Delay has been added the short novel The Return of William Shakespeare. The combined book is lively and abounding in high spirits. Hugh Kingsmill has an enviable talent as a satirist, and although a few details date, it was well worth re-publishing these amusing fantasies. "W.J.", with its deft satire on love and simulteneously on the writers of love stories, is the most important portion of the book considered as fiction; "Disintegration of a Politician" is the best satire. The novel about Shakespeare, almost miraculously revivified, is amusing too, but grows tedious where Shakespeare is obliged to comment on himself in the language of his own commentators, perhaps the grossest humiliation he could have been asked to submit to. Hugh Kingsmill brings to his work an intellectual sharpness which, unluckily, has not»been admitted to much recent fiction: "Mr. Evesham’s big reputation was a mosaic of small reputations. Men of affairs admired him as a philosopher. Philosophers admired him as a man of affairs. Thinkers of plebian origin were flattered that an aristocrat should condescend to enquire into the mystery of things; and aristocrats were heartened by the rugfour that one at least of their order was capable of sustained thought. The merit of old age was his, too .,. ." This book can be commended to everyone who efijoys fantastic and witty comedy in the vein of Beerbohm’s Zule-

ika Dobson.

David

Hall