ALTHOUGH in most instances that emasculated anomaly called "poetic prose" is to be deprecated, it is impossible to deny that from poetry and the poetic mind, prose can gain much to its advantage without losing its own character and strength. "Riverhead," a novel conceived as a novel, but conceived by a poet, who brings to prose, unconsciously perhaps, his lyric sensitiveness and intensity, is more than sufficient justification for this statement. it is a book that has elements of romanticism, realism, and humor, a combination as happy as it is rare in our time. it has a compact, simple, strong form; and a philosophic idea as its basis that ought to satisfy Mr. T. S. Eliot. On the other hand, avoiding the Joycian method of presenting every detail no matter how irrelevant, a practice apt to be boring, Mr. Hillyer achieves an impression of the fullness of life, of its completeness and reality, by a careful selection of detail and use of only that necessary, displaying all his power as an artist.

Paul Sharon, the character about whom the novel is built, is completely human; his healthy vigor, his disgust at shani and hypoerisy, his feeling for beauty, and his strong passion are contested against an inability to come to any decision, much as strength and weakness are opposed in most people. He is an ingenious, attractive lad whose life has been ruined by family heritage, an abnormal childhood, and his chronic incapacity to cope with the situations he comes up against, "Riverhead" deals with the metamorphosis of this last characteristic.

On his way by canoe up a small Connecticut river to visit his godfather, he stops first to see the girl he had loved and broken off with four years before. For financial reasons, she is about to be married to a perfect scoundrel. Paul finds he still loves her, but is unable to do anything but make himself unpleasant. He next encounters the rather brummagem woman he thinks his mother whom he leaves frustrated, but with half given promises which nauseate him. And finally after seeing the squalor and sordidness of a mill town and the hypocritical enthusiasm of a Methodist Camp Meeting, he is merely faced with a sense of his own inadequacy.

At the riverhead in a long conversation with his goldfather an old man who has found a philosophic calm, a true contentment, who reveals to him the diagnosis and cure of his disorder, Paul regains the use of his will. And padding down the river, he amends the situations be left untouched. The current is now with him, both physically and morally, and the going in considerably easier. The camp meeting he breaks up; to the two derelicts of the industrial world he gives a new start in life; and his step-mother, he persuades they could never be happy together. He comes upon the girl he loves on the eve of her marriage; and after rendering her fiance sufficiently disgusting with a strong emetic, he snatches her away before she knows what is happening. Through the night, pant a burning airplane, they float down the river; and in the morning they find themselves out at sea, faced with the future together, and the problem of getting back.

"Riverhead" is a novel both sensitive and powerful. It has profited by the battles waged by D. H. Lawrence, James Joyce, and Wyndham Lewis for the freedom of literature; and shown that the novel has at last come into its peaceful own. "Riverhead" will probably be read and enjoyed, as the novels of Thackeray and Jane Austin are today, when most of its contemporaries are forgotten