New-York tribune., 1922-09-17


Err. COMPTON MACKENZIE
m IM ties a new string to his bow
!W|@ even oftener than he ac-
q quires new publisher, but
there are two threads to
which he has been faithful, in his
fsshion-his peculiarly English sense
AZ humor and his peculiarly English
sense of religion. Perhaps even now,
saw that in the case of each of the
neayls fished up by Mr.. Mackenzie's
atse-though indeed these fruits of the
runmage might not yet be all pearls
his mind has a further iridiscence to
confer, and that the shining Lawrence
ssiII hangs in the dusty rear of Mr..
Benrett and Mr.. Wells, of Mr.. Mac
kenzie and MIR. Walpole and Mr. Can
nan. and all of those other English
nayesists whom Mrs. Gerould so
na5~ely boasts of being unable to dis
siuguish; but critic with a less ex-
auisite feeling for moral subtleties
could probably, even though he might
have quite real tenderness for the
Mackenzie of his youth, say no more
shan that Mr.. Mackenzie presents the
tmost interesting literary evolution of
our day. He has been extremely un-
satisfactory to the English reviewers
since he commenced author as poet,
ard By the delicate stages of tale
liks an eighteenth century fan, bal
jeyfna half Fragonard and half Degas,
a portrait of boy which has left it's
mark on every story of youth written
in this decade, became the unashamed
humorist of "Sylvia Scarlet" and
poor Relations" and erich Relatives. -
Now, in the shadow of forty wears.
he has gone back to the youth of a man
who Will be priest, but it is no longer
the 'outh of a Michael Fame, no longer
boy iood's glory and dreaming spires
The story of Mark Lidderdale- per.
feet ecclesiastical name-and his prog
res to ordination will certainly, tc
tho numerous Americans who are
viii out either interest or information
conc srning the Latitudinarians and the
0xft rd movement, be as mysterious and
distinctly less fascinating than the dis
appearance of the rolling-pin, the mys-
terry of the Holy Trinity, and the Coram
Street Mystery were to little Mark AS
the dust cover cleverly connecting the
book it shelters with the most impress
sive literary name of the moment men
tions, Mr.. Strachey has brought Car
dinal Newman and Cardinal Manning,
Pusey and Eurrell Froude almost into
the popular consciousness, but that is
not quite enough; the Incompatible
"Apologia Pro Vita Sua," Wilfrid
Wards life of its author; Mark Patti
sons Memoirs; Benjamin Jowett s
life and his unbelievably numerous let
ters, all of the documents of that pc
Rod which must captivate every one at
some time, though one may be grateful
for their memory in approaching "The
Altar Steps" still leave almost any one
except the Warden of Keble College un-
der the necessity of falling back upon
the conviction that Mr.. Mackenzie is
: the one contemporary novelist who
seems incapable of small errors, and
that he would never, like Mrs. Whar-
ton, read the Service for the Burial of
the Dead over even an unwilling bride
groom, that he could not, indeed, con-
fuse che Ordering of Deacons with the
Conservation of Archbishops.
Marx Lidderdale had, to begin with
the misfortune of a theoretically re-
ligious Inheritance, of that strange abil-
ity to accept the miracle of a divine
revelation and then to haggle over the
propriety of fiddle-backed chasubles
and the impropriety of Gothic ones
which is so distinctive of the Church
Of England-the most civilized of his
toric religions, but .theologically sc
fragile that its clergy spill out at one