ZANGWILL lets us know in a
felicitous epistle-dedicatory to an evidently charming lady, designed as
a "bland" and leisurely book, free from any trace of war's horrors or
modern perplexities, the sort you could read comfortably with a sore
throat on you. I think if I had not been in such rude health I might
have managed the five hundred and eighty odd close-set pages without
getting just a little tired of his worthy Essex peasants of the time of
the great Hyde Park Exhibition. _Jinny_ herself is a perfect darling, of
real wit and character, and her business as the local carrier gives a
plausible machinery for the introduction of an enormous number, a truly
Dickensian profusion, of subsidiary characters. _Jinny_ indeed is above
criticism, but the trouble with many, indeed with most, of the others,
seemed to me to be their exaggerated sprightliness of speech, just a
little too clever to be credible and not quite amusing enough to be
palatable in large doses. To me the real pleasure of the book comes from
the author's craftsmanlike use of words and the humour and imagination
of his descriptions and asides.
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