Couch, Arthur Thomas Quiller- (“Q,” pseud.). Sir John Constantine: memoirs of his adventures at home and abroad, and particularly in the island of Corsica, beginning with the year 1756; written by his son, Prosper Paleologus, otherwise Constantine; ed. by Q. †$1.50. Scribner.
This tale of adventure “has movement, suspense, the thrill of danger and the delight of high-minded devotion and idealized love. The time is in the seventeenth century, when Corsica was in arms against Genoa’s occupation and oppression, and the people were rallying to Paoli. Among the aspirants for the crown is a young English lad whose somewhat quixotic but chivalrous father, Sir John Constantine, of Cornwall, has procured from Theodore, a dissolute ex-king confined in an English debtor’s prison, a written renunciation in favor of the boy, together with the possession of the famous iron crown. With a few friends Sir John and his son land in Corsica and encounter adventure aplenty.”—Outlook.
+ Acad. 71: 440. N. 3, ’06. 550w.
“As adventure there has been no better story for a long time; and there is many a laugh in it too.”
+ + Ath. 1906, 2: 687. D. 1, 310w.
“A novel of adventure of many merits is ‘Sir John Constantine,’ about whose ultimate relation to the literature of its period there need be but little doubt.” A. Schade van Westrum.
+ + Bookm. 14: 379. D. ’06. 630w.
“How does he produce a literature that is not literal of life, but higher—a sublimated form of memories that come to the reader like the fragrance of centuries, sweet and familiar, too elusive to hold, too dear to lose?”
+ + Ind. 61: 935. O. 18, ’06. 730w.