The cry for something new in literature, the indefinable, the unexpected, has been answered. Prince Azreel comes to claim his place, not as one who has sounded the depths and shoals of the current modes of the day, but as one entirely careless of these things, discoursing freely of life, easily throughout its whole purport and scope.
The Devil comes into the action, but he also is new—rather the Spirit of the World, “man’s elder brother.” His methods are those neither of Faust nor of Paradise Regained. His temptations are suasive, his lures less material.
In the search for the Ideal of statesmanship Azreel and the Devil come to our own Parliament, Azreel filled with warm enthusiasm, high conceptions. They see, they learn; they discover “types,” and discuss them. We find the Devil at length defending the Commons, supplying the corrective to Azreel’s strange disillusions. This part will not be the least piquant.
London: STEPHEN SWIFT & CO., LTD., 10 John St., Adelphi
POEMS
BY CHARLES GRANVILLE
F’cap 4to. 5s. net.
REAL POETIC TALENT
The present volume is composed of a selection from the previous poetical works of the Author, who is also well known as a writer of prose. The distinctive feature of the poems in this collection—the feature, indeed, that marks off and differentiates the work of this poet from the mass of verse produced to-day—is their spiritual insight. Mr Granville is concerned with the soul of man, with the eternal rather than the transitory, and his perception, which is that of the seer, invests his language with that quality of ecstasy that constitutes the indisputable claim of poetry to rank in the forefront of literature.