New-York tribune., 1909-12-18
ARNOLD BENNETT.
His Remarkable Talent an a
Nez0 Light.

THE GLIMFSE-AN ADVENTURE OF
THE SOUL. BY Arnold Bennett. 12mo,
pp. Y, $50. L. Appleton & Co
In reviewing last summer Mr.. Ben
nett's extraordinary novel of life IN an
English provincial town, The Old wives
Tale" we spoke of that book as giving
him a rank higher than that which ne
had previously enjoyed, and aft1rmed
the necessity Of taking him with more or
critical seriousness. We have wondered
since what the significance of his next
book would be The Glimpse" is not
by any means a book of the same sub
stance and value as its predecessor, but
it is Enthusiastically the work of the same
hand that wrote THE Old Wives Tale;
and. again, it is a book to take seriously.
Thought and technical power have gone
to the making of it; also something Of
that poignant feeling for human life
which left so deep an impression in last
summers novel 1t is a little difficult to
say whether it should be described as an
artistic tour de force or as a thoroughly
sincere record of an emotional reverie.
In any case it remains a work Of eXcep-
tional interest.
The supposititious narrator of this
Adventure of the Soul is an egotistical
man of forty, an historian of music,
whose life has been peculiarly success
full His book has brought him fame.
A rich legacy has surrounded him with
luxury and made his future secure. The
woman he has married, clever and beau
tiful, has seemed the one woman in the
world to make him happy. But when
the tale opens it is plain that happiness
is escaping him, and presently we per-
ceive that the grand passion which he
had thought would last indefinitely has
burned itself out. 1t is at this bitter
moment, in which he has resolved to re-
build domestic contentment on reason
since he can no longer be sure of the
heart, that his wife hurls a thunderbolt
upon him in the shape of an almost un-
believable revelation. A little while later
he is laid upon his bed and given up for
dead. We reach. with this crisis, the
end of the first division of the book.
The second is devoted to 1.-The Glimpse"
which is to say, a glimpse of the life
beyond death In the third the condi-
tions of the earlier part of the narrative
are resumed.
Obviously Mr.. Bennett has sought TO
achieve the impossible, and the SUPER
natural part of his story OF course fails
to carry conviction. Yet we have never
known an experiment of this sort to go
so far toward success, we have never
known fantastical speculation like this
70 h.
There are passages which provoke inn
patience, notably those In which the au-
thor seeks TO visualize phenomena visi
BILE only. on his hypothesis, 10 the dead
and we wish, momentarily, in reading
these, that he had held his hand AL
most in the game moment, however. we
yield 10 his spell and this not because
his eerieness has captured our imagina
ton. but because there runs through
his incredible panorama so genuine and
SO moving sense of tragic human feel
ing. II is as though in his daring in
terlude Mr. Bennett had raised to a
higher power the note OF sympathy
struck in the / stage Of his argu
ment and in the third. We come back
TO his remarkable grasp upon truth, TO
his instinct for the fundamental emo
tions that stir men and women, and we
willingly grant him his excursion into