Lately, Mr. E.F. BENSON seems to have been devoting himself almost wholly to chronicling the short and simple annals of the middle-aged. With one exception, all his recent protagonists have been, if not exactly in the sere and yellow, at least ripely mature. So that such a title as that of his latest novel, _An Autumn Solving_ (COLLINS), produced in me rather a feeling of familiar expectancy than of surprise. Also when the wrapper artist clothes a volume with a picture of an elderly gentleman obviously giving up an attractive young woman of perhaps one-third his years it is idle to pretend that the contents retain all the thrill of the unforeseen. Having said so much, I can let myself go in praise (as how often before) of those qualities of insight and gently sub-acid humour that make a BENSON novel an interlude of pure enjoyment to the "jaded reviewer." In case the indiscreet cover may happily have been removed before the volume reaches your hands, I do not propose to give away the plot in any detail. The autumn sowing of course produces a crop not exactly of wild oats, but of romantic tares that springs in the hitherto barren heart of one _Keeling_, prosperous tradesman, husband, father, mayor, public benefactor and baronet, by reason of the too sympathetic damsel who types his letters and catalogues his library. That library shows Mr. BENSON'S genius; without it I should hardly have been able to believe in the subsequent happenings, but, given this "secret garden," all the tragedy is explained. I have left myself no space in which to do justice to some admirable characterization. _Keeling's_ wife is worthy of a place in the author's long gallery of woolly-witted matrons; while in _Silverdale_ he has given a study of clerical futility and egotism almost savage in its detestability, a portrait at which one laughs and shudders together. Of course the book will have, and deserve, a huge welcome. * * * * *