AT RANDOM

BY L. F. Austin. New York and on don : Ward, Locke & Co. The essays and sketches that make up this attractive volume have already appeared in English periodicals, and are here given in larger type with marginal headings" finger-posts which the reviewer may find sufficiently luminous without exploring the adjacent country." A rubricated book-plate, circumscribed " We'll e'en to't like French falconers, fly at anything we see," and the frontispiece portrait of the ' author frankly invite one to be en rafibort with the personality, or impersonality, of a certain delightful page in the Sketch, which Mr. Clement Shorter, it is quaintly hinted, has watched with feelings" not unmixed with wonder and alarm." Mr. Austin is a ripe product of the higher journalism, a man of " original virtues," as Mr. Kipling would perhaps say, who has held on to them well amid the vicissitudes of his craft. The wonder is not that he is familiar with so many subjects, in the world of men and books and imagination, but that on his tour through them he has stopped at so many points of general interest. He knows the psychological moment of approach to an old-time theme, and has a quick eye for the picturesque and characteristic in the life about him. His hu-mour is alternately sedate, fantastic, or ironical It does not rollick and bray like Mr. Bernard Shaw's, nor quietly cheer like Mr. Quiller Couch's, nor has it the touch-and go of Mr. Zangwill's wit. It has a gentlemanly quality of its own, and is as urbane, concise, and unob-trusive as the style which is its vehicle. Strongly influenced by Thackeray (we are told), Mr. Austin's heart is less visualised than was Thackeray's. He has, rather, the sympathy and candour, though none of the lush, mellow manner of Mr: Laurence Hutton. Compared with the collection of "fragments" recently published by Mr J. E. Chamberlin, At Random is cosmopolitan in tone and more sanely panoramic. Mr. Austin extradites his consciousness to the objects of his' observation without a twinge of pain or a sign of self confusion. On this ac-count, perhaps, his book has been termed " an impersonal diary of an intellectual Londoner." It is mnore.
Book Review date: 
Monday, March 1, 1897
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