In his monograph, "Rupert Brooke and the Intellectual Imagination", Walter de la Mare quotes from a letter written to him by an American friend, "We over here can't have all the simple, lovely and solitary things of which Englishmen write. It helps so much to think of them as they are in England."

There are many of us who have this feeling for England and for all that springs from English earth. We go to the poems of John Masefield, Edward Thomas and Walter de la Mare for just this lovely, solitary thing that only England can give us.

"Memoirs of a Midget" by Walter de la Mare gives to its readers all of this beauty--and more. It is a lasting book, a memorable book, so piercing, so palpable is it in the dwelling music of its words.

The story is that of a Midget--a tiny, tippeting little creature, lovely to look upon and completely enchanting in all her little ways. In her Memoirs she tells of her early years, her green youth, her encounters with the world, and how the world spoiled her--and how in the end she was saved from becoming the pampered little mammet that she appeared during her last weeks with Mrs. Monnerie. "The World", says Miss M., "wields a sharp pin and is pitiless to bubbles". The story is a miracle in execution--thoroughly Greek in its symmetry and close-knit restraint. The texture of it is like carefully and beautifully wrought music. The economy of art revealed on every page is amazing. No incident, no detail, however trivial it may seem, but serves its purpose and recurs, like a theme in music, to startle one with recollected beauty. It has an inevitable quality of phrase.

There is no trace of the incongruous about this book, for all that the heroine is (externally) incredibly minute. There is nothing unpleasant or morbid or deformed about Miss M. She is simply the distilled essence of you or me--or any frail other one of "the common size". All the people in these pages are alive. When next I am in Kent I am sure that I shall meet them--all save Miss M. herself who was so lately "called away".

There is Mrs. Bowater, "a woman who disapproved of most things, for excellent, if nebulous, reasons; and her silences were due not to the fact that she had nothing to say, but too much". Her words are Oracular. There is a Greek dignity in her austere tragic devotion to Miss M., to her absent husband, and to her daughter Fannie.

Fannie it is who first made the midget her slave. ". . . the silence was broken by a clear voice, like that of a cautious mocking-bird out of a wood . . ." Then there is Mr. Anon., who gives his life for the midget. Mr. Crimble, Mrs. Monnerie, Polly, and a host of others, not to mention Sir Walter Pollacke who was such a wise friend to Miss M. and who as her executor published these Memoirs.

This book is quick with moments of such beauty as only Walter de la Mare can achieve. There are sentences on every page that bite one. I could quote whole paragraphs but the space is denied me.

"This book will live; it hath a Genius; this

Above his reader, or his prafeor, is.