Are you a victim to the _Tarzan_ habit? Perhaps your eye may have been caught by the word on bookstalls as the generic title of an increasing pile of volumes; but knowing, like myself, that all things explain themselves in time, you may have been content to leave it at that. Meanwhile, however, the thing has continued to spread, till on the wrapper of _Tarzan the Untamed_ (METHUEN), which now at last finds me out, its publishers are able to number its devotees in millions. Well, of course the outstanding fact about such popularity is that in face of it any affectation of superiority becomes simply silly. One has got to accept this creation of Mr. EDGAR RICE BURROUGHS as among the definite literary phenomena of our time. In the immediate spasm before me _Tarzan_ (who is, if you need telling, a kind of horribly exaggerated _Mowgli_ after a diet of the Food of the Gods) is represented as placing himself at the disposal of the British forces in East Africa, and attacking the Germans with man-eating lions. The rather chastening feature of which was my own unexpected enjoyment of the idea. Even, for one disconcerting moment, like the persons in the admonitory anecdotes who taste opium "just for fun," I began to feel that perhaps.... However it passed, and the temptation has not returned. Meanwhile the real nature of Tarzanism, whether some sinister possession or simply the age-long appetite for the monstrous, just now a little out of hand, remains as far from solution as ever. * * * * * Mr. HORACE BLEACKLEY, whose last excursion into political fiction was a description of an opera-bouffe Labour Government in action, addresses himself, in _The Monster_ (HEINEMANN), to a more serious theme. His monster is the factory system, and if I say that this witty novel will provide the ignorant and comfortable with instruction as well as entertainment I hope I shan't have done him any harm. The author, while making his points against the system, notes truly enough that the risen ranker, the one who had been through the dreadful mill, with its ninety-hour working week for children, became the hardest master during that wonderful period of the Manchesterising of England which laid the train for the explosions of our present discontents. He reminds us also of that admirable speech, made about every ten years for the last hundred or so in the House with the same fervour and conviction, to the effect that any change in conditions or wages would surely mean the complete ruin of the country. A comforting speech, that! Perhaps Mr. BLEACKLEY, presenting three generations from Peterloo to the Jubilee of QUEEN VICTORIA, covers too much ground for full effect, but he has pleasantly gilded a wholesome pill for pleasant people. Good luck to him. * * * * *