I can't quite make out what made Mr. WILLIAM HEWLETT persist in _Introducing William Allison_ (SECKER). Probably a nice general conviction (rather infectious; I caught it) of his own cleverness. If his work wants a good deal of pulling together separate bits of it are confoundedly well done. The schoolboy conversations (_William_ is a Winchester man, thrown into a lawyer's clerkship straight from the sixth) and the picture of the superbly groomed associates of his friend's brother, _Marmaduke Fenton_, are cases in point, though I don't think Winchester would have been so absurdly abashed by the glories of bachelordom in Half-Moon Street. So too is the lecture of _Parbury_, the neo-decadent, on the cultivation of "that sacred and imperishable flower, the white unsullied bloom of an Intensely Useless Life," even if it be only a belated cutting from _The Green Carnation_. _William's_ first boyish passion for a quite cold shop-minx, with its agonies of self-abasement and rarefied desire, is uncannily clever; and the thoroughly unpleasant episode of our _William_, minx-free, only to be caught in the toils of that insatiable sensualist, Mrs. _Daintree_, is presented with discreet vigour. There is possibly a moral in the fascinating _Marmaduke's_ desperate half-hour in Dr. _Ferox's_ consulting-room. But Mr. HEWLETT never wrote this flippant tale to point a moral. Rather, as I suggest, he seems to have said, "These are samples of several _genres_ in which I can succeed on my head. Some day I will really finish something. Meanwhile pray be amused." * * * * * Of Miss ETHEL DELL'S popularity there seems to be no possible doubt, and her publishers, Messrs. HUTCHINSON, assure me that her latest, _The Bars of Iron_, is the best novel she has written. While accepting their unprejudiced judgment I retain the liberty of remaining unimpressed. Miss DELL has an eye for a plot and she can make things move; but her methods are too feverish for my taste. A man-fight in the prologue is followed by a dog-fight in the first chapter, and through the early part of the book the _Rev. S. Lorimer_ beats his numerous family again and again. It is true that, between her explosions, she introduces certain lovable characters, but they fail to correct the general atmosphere of violence. Neither the beauty of _Piers Evesham_ (his naked shoulders looked "like a piece of faultless statuary, god-like, superbly strong"), nor his sympathy with children, offers adequate compensation for his volcanic temperament. If Miss DELL, who seems to have a penchant for tempestuous heroes, would devote some of her superfluous energy to a study of men, so as to get to understand them as well as she understands her own sex, it would be a good thing for the quality both of her work and of her public. * * * * *