Señor Ibañez' new novel, Mare Nostrum (Constable), is ostensibly a yarn about spies and submarines, its hero a gallant Spanish captain, Ulysses Ferragut, scion of a long line of sailormen. And there can be no doubt of the proper anti-German sentiments of this stout fellow, even though his impetuous passion for Freya Talberg, a Delilah in the service of the enemy, did make him store a tiny island with what the translator will persist in calling combustibles, meaning, one supposes, fuel. But more fundamentally it is an affectionate song of praise of the Mediterranean and the dwellers on its littoral, especially the fiery and hardy sailors of Spain, and of Spaniards, in particular the Valencians and Catalonians. Signor Ibañez' method is distinctly discursive; he gives, for instance, six-and-twenty consecutive pages to the description of the inmates of the Naples Aquarium and is always ready to suspend his story for a lengthy disquisition on any subject, person or place that interests him. This puts him peculiarly at the mercy of his transliterator, who has a positive genius for choosing the wrong word and depriving any comment of its subtlety, any well-made phrase of its distinction. Even plain narrative such as the following is none too attractive:—"The voluminous documents would become covered with dust on his table and Don Esteban would have to saddle himself with the dates in order that the end of the legal procedures should not slip by." What ingenuous person authorises this sort of "authorised translation"?
If I may say so without offence, Mr. Edgar Rice Burroughs reminds me a little of those billiard experts who, having evolved a particular stroke, will continue it indefinitely, to the joy of the faithful and the exasperated boredom of the others. To explain my metaphor, I gather that Mr. Burroughs, having "got set," to an incredible number of thousands, with an invention called Tarzan, is now by way of beating his own record over the adventures of John Carter in the red planet Mars. Concerning these amazing volumes there is just this to say, that either you can read them with avidity or you can't read them at all. From certain casual observations I conceive the test to be primarily one of youth, for honesty compels my middle-age to admit a personal failure. I saw the idea; for one thing no egg was ever a quarter so full of meat as the Martian existence of incomprehensible thrills, to heighten the effect of which Mr. Burroughs has invented what amounts to a new language, with a glossary of its own, thus appealing to a well-known instinct of boyhood, but rendering the whole business of a more than Meredithian obscurity to the uninitiate. I have hitherto forgotten to say that the particular volume before me is called The War Lord of Mars (Methuen). I may add that it closes with the heroic Carter hailed as Jeddak of Jeddaks, which sounds eminently satisfactory, though without conveying any definite promise of finality.
The Knight. "Let's see. We have already overcome the chief jailer and his ten assistants, and slain the fearsome hound which guarded the courtyard. We have now to destroy the one-eyed giant and the bean-fed dragon, scale the outer wall, swim the moat and then to horse. Courage, sweet lady! You are practically saved."
Do Poultry Pay?
"Six Hens for sale, some laying 7s. each."
—Local Paper.