PROFESSOR TINDALL, in this witty and searching book on the outstanding primitivist of our time, has been concerned with two fundamental points: Lawrence viewed as in the stream of post-Victorian intellectual revolt against Christianity, evolution and scientists in general; and secondly, Lawrence taken as a symbol of the frustrated romanticism which Professor Tindall finds to be the true essence of our age. He accompanies Lawrence on his spiritual peregrinations into the wilds of theosophy, and for the first time offers a complete investigation of the novelist's reading.

Lawrence, after vainly attempting to set up a cult of his own, established some sort of mystical communion with the cow, Susan, about whom he wrote what the lay mind cannot consider better than gibberish. Professor Tindall brings an uncompromising realism and common-sense to his subject, although he occasionally lapses into something like sympathy. Not that there can ever be true sympathy between a Mozartian on the one hand and a Wagnerite like Lawrence on the other! This is Professor Tindall's second study of a literary figure for whom he has no real liking (Bunyan was the first). We shall be interested to see the results of his turning to more congenial subjects. They can hardly be better.