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It was nobly imagined; it has been well observed; and the work of passing what had been observed through the fire of composition had been decently accomplished. When he moved from the hard pavements of London to the moist airs of Oxfordshire, in Guy and Pauline, Mr. Mackenzie's observation was even finer; certainly it was more suhtle and it was concerned with less perishable stuff. The poignancy of this novel—to put it unkindly, its subject is a girl's first love and disappointment—is proof enough that it is psychologically true. Otherwise the tragedy must have made it absurd.

The other novels of Mr. Mackenzie are a series of records, minute, often entertaining, undeniably alive and accurate, of the actions and emotions of several groups of young people. They have all the qualities of good novels except creative strength, and all the appearance of the spectacle of life except its emotional verity. When Mr. Mackenzie gave up the creation of beauty he suffered more than his readers; for he sacrificed, at the same altar, the one thing which, for him, made life worth recording. That shows in his new novel.

Poor Relations is a farce. Any number of children and adults pass through its pages, all acting exactly as children and adults act. Their manners, their cheap wit, their meannesses and hypocrisies are all set down. A plot of quite exceptional banality and incidents of incredible age and vulgarity serve to display these life-like wares. Trained animals could hardly respond so well, and mechanical toys are not so versatile. But life escapes jauntily in this story of a rich dramatist who flees from his greedy relatives to find—I quote the jacket—romance in London. Romance! Dear Lord, the gentleman marries a secretary whom H. G. Wells would have been proud to give away at the registrar's.

What remains a mystery is the identity of the goddess at whose altar Mr. Mackenzie laid down his precious gifts—the creative imagination, the love of beauty, the deep, sane comprehension of life. He had, at the beginning, escaped nearly all the perils; he had rejected the outworn antithesis of realism and romance; his endowment, his zeal, his passion, were abundant. He seemed to be the only one of the young novelists of England who discerned the wanton loveliness of life under the dreary trappings of existence. And to-day he is all trappings, unmistakably gaudy, dazzling in his quick changes, still entertaining, a master of every effect except the effect of creation.