While it will not rank among the best of Mr. Walpole's
books, it is full of excellent _genre_ pieces rendered with subtlety and
poise.
III. TRANSLATIONS
THE HORSE-STEALERS AND OTHER STORIES, and THE SCHOOLMISTRESS AND
OTHER STORIES, by _Anton Chekhov_ translated from the Russian by
_Constance Garnett_ (The Macmillan Company). Mrs. Garnett's
excellent edition of Chekhov is rapidly drawing to a conclusion. In
the two volumes now under consideration we find the greater part of
Chekhov's very short sketches, notably many of the humorous pieces
which he wrote in early life. These are most often brief renderings
of a mood, or quiet ironic contrasts which set forth facts without
drawing any moral or pointing to any intellectual conclusion.
LITTLE PIERRE, and THE SEVEN WIVES OF BLUEBEARD, by
_Anatole France_; edited by _Frederic Chapman_, _James Lewis May_, and
_Bernard Miall_. (John Lane). The first of these volumes presents
another instalment of the author's autobiography in the form of a series
of delicately rendered pictures portrayed with quiet deftness and a
laughing irony which is half sad. In "The Seven Wives of Bluebeard" he
has retold four legends and endowed them with a philosophic content of
smiling ironic doubt which accepts life as we find it and preaches a
gentle disillusioned epicureanism.
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