In short, a real nursery book for the study; not one perhaps
that actual children would care for (quite possibly they might resent
it as betrayal), but one that for the less fortunate will reopen a door
of which too many of us have long lost the key.
* * * * *
What I found strangest in the _Transactions of Lord Louis Lewis_
(MURRAY) is that it is a story, or rather series of stories, about
rogues, in which trickery is invariably vanquished--a refreshing
contrast to the methods of most of our romanticists, who are given to a
certain courtier-like attitude towards the lawbreaker. Certainly that
various artist, Mr. ROLAND PERTWEE, has contrived to put together a
highly entertaining collection of diamond-cut-diamond yarns, adventure
tales that have the great advantage (for these days) of being concerned,
not with bloodshed and mysterious murders, but with the wiles of dealers
in the spurious antique and the exploits of _Lord Louis_ in defeating
them. This _Lord Louis_ is indeed a very pleasant as well as a very
ingenious gentleman. From the rotundity of his conversational periods
and a certain general suavity of demeanour I suspect him of having made
a careful study of the methods of his distinguished predecessor in
rogue-reducing, _Prince Florizel of Bohemia._ But he is, of course, none
the worse company for that. Once, however, he shocked me badly, when, in
perusing an eighteenth-century MS., he--I can hardly bring myself to
quote the passage!--he "moistened his fingers and turned over three
pages.
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