The Birmingham age-herald., 1921-03-18
M E N, w o FEN
 A ND T HIN c s

DOC@~ Manrelps Romance" I was glad to get it. as I wanted some data about the noted Shakespearean actor who is to be here all next week.
 I supposed, of course, that the book was a piece of press agent stuff and never took it seriously, expecting only to dip in 1t here and there to get a few facts around which to weave a story, any pleasure out the way in which it was written.
 But, take it from me, I got the sur prise of my life, for on opening after supper I never put it down until I had read it from "kiver to kiver,"i for c. J. Bullet. who wrote it, has way all his own when it comes to writing an appreciation. It isn't in any sense formal biography, although it gives the main incidents in the life of Man tell.
 Some biographers write dry as dust volumes about their heroes, but Bull liet's memoirs are full of life. and there isn't a dull page in the book. He has a happy knack of kidding his readers, which, if not well done. is nuisance, but, when done with consum- mate daring and art, is simply irresis- tible. I, for one, like to be treated as a human being, and if speaker or writer can josh" me the more l en- joy it..
 The average preface or prologue is a perfunctory kind of a thing, and in most cases might as we'll be skipped; but the man who passes up the prologue to Robert Mantells Ro- nance" will miss about as clever an essay or rather sermonette on gossip which was ever penned, and I heartily agree with his opening sentence: Nothing is more interc sting to nor tals than gossip about their fellow mortals.'
 Having said this much and plunged a rapier into the philosopher who finds his chief delight in the pursuit of an abstract hobby unconnected with the daily tolls and delights of human kind, he whimsically but with common sense appeals to the two charming women who discuss their neighbors' private affairs over the backyard fence,'' knowing full well that with feminine instinct they are aware that he is right in believing that normal humanity relishes gossip.
 If there was any doubt as to the ability of two females leaning over a division fence to settle the regulations of the rest of the women in the block, he cites literary example that cannot be challenged, for James Boswell knew it, too, and hfs biography of pompous old Dr. Johnson will endure as long as there is a language into which to translate it." But not satis- fled with giving present-day witness es, and calling up the Boswellian shade, he harkens back to ancien- his- tory and makes old Plutarch himself plead guilty in his lives of the Greeks and the Romans
 I am seining out his prologue be- cause it's the 'lead," so to speak, and therefore gives one tip on what to expect when he gets to telling about Mantell when he opens up. He is de- lighted that the postal authorities have not yet discovered Suetonious, who wrote the fascinating lives of the Caesars so full of intimate episodes. He also congratulates himself that Uncle Sams censors have not yet found out those other entertaining gossips, Moses, Samuel, King Solomon and St. Paul. What a shame it would be-" he boxes were denied the use of the mailsr Tins may be a bit flippant, but it throws a new light on some of the Bible worthies.
 He makes out a mighty good case for gossip; Herodotus knew l am right (In the value he puts on gossip when he stenciled on parchment the scandalous dorngs of the ancient daughter of the. Phara ohs extracted | from her lovers the price of pyramid. 1 Michelet knew it when he hardened to the mystic murmurings from the age-stained manuscripts of the archives of Paris Tacitus knew it when he l traced in vitriol the most savagely awful indictment of royal humanity ever penned. And so did Anne Jor- dan, when she began her clever studies in The Age Herald under the fetching title. Vivid vamps of History
 
 I am also in agreement with MT. Bullet when he lines out Voltaire for writing dull biography of Charles XII of Sweden, "a general perhaps as able and perhaps as interesting as Caesar or Alexander but who must lie in a penumbral oblivion for want of Plutarch!" I know this to be true for one of the first bits of parallel reading put upon me when as lad l was enrolled in a private school in I the great Swede by a man who at least ought to have made it scintillate, for he had a great subject and certain ly knew how to use his own language in masterly way.
 But the last stroke, the one for which I could hug friend Bullet is the mortal stab which he gives to one Max Nordau who for a brief space strutted on the stage as the leading scientifSc luminary in the literary world; but whose egotistic and banal l criticisms of the geniuses of all time have been appraised at their worth and he no longer is looked upon as the great arbiter of the sanity of the poets, 1 painters, musicians philosophers. At- | terateurs and men of mark in the va rious walks of life. think he "de-