The Equinox (Volume I, Number III)

THE BIG STICK of novelists; one feels throughout that his occultism is the result of study and not of experience. That is why I say exoteric. Although the style of the book is comparatively undistinguished, and some- times lapses into actual slovenliness, Mr. Brodie-Innes frequently attains beauty, and beauty of a positive and original kind. Some of his sea-pictures are quite fine. But the magic of style that renders Arthur Machen so marvellous is lack- ing. “Old as the World” is always interesting; it is never enthralling. “Old as the World” is much better than “Morag the Seal,” and there is a marked improvement in the style. V.B.N. BLACK Macic. By MARJORIE BOWEN. Alston Rivers. 6s. Marjorie Bowen knows nothing of the real magic, but she has learnt the tales spread by fools about sorcerers, and fostered by them as the best possible concealments of their truth. Of these ingredients she has brewed a magnificent hell-broth. No chapter lacks its jewelled incident, and the web that she has woven of men’s passions is a flame-red tapestry stained with dark patches of murder and charred here and there with fire of hell. Marjorie Bowen has immense skill; has she genius? How can a stranger say? So many nowadays are forced by sheer starvation into writing books that will sell—and when they have taken the devil’s money, find that it is in no figure that he has their souls in pawn. I am told that it is the ambition of W. S. Maugham to write a great play. A.C. THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL. By ALGERNON BLACKWOOD. Macmillan and Co. 6s. I read this book on the Express Train from Eastbourne to London (change at Polegate, Lewes, Hayward’s Heath, Three Bridges, Red Hill, and East Croydon—they ought to stop to set down passengers at Earlswood), and though it’s a beautiful story, and I like Nixie,I must confess to being rather bored. Rather with a capital R and a sforzando ev. I wanted George Macdonald’s “Lilith,” and Arthur Machen’s “Hill of Dreams”—they have blood in them. And I was not in my library, but in a stuffy, dog-returneth-to-his-vomit-scented microbe-catcher labelled 1st Compo. Then, too, Algernon Blackwood began to remind me of Maeterlinck. There was too much bluebirdiness, and it gave me the blue devils. And then, again, though I’ve never read J. M. Barrie, I felt sure 331