(3) Mrs. Somerville and Mary Carpenter.  By Phyllis Browne, Author of What Girls Can Do, etc. (Cassell and Co.)

(4) Ismay’s Children.  By the Author of Hogan, M.P.; Flitters, Tatters, and the Counsellor, etc. (Macmillan and Co.)

ARISTOTLE AT AFTERNOON TEA

(Pall Mall Gazette, December 16, 1887.)

In society, says Mr. Mahaffy, every civilised man and woman ought to feel it their duty to say something, even when there is hardly anything to be said, and, in order to encourage this delightful art of brilliant chatter, he has published a social guide without which no debutante or dandy should ever dream of going out to dine.  Not that Mr. Mahaffy’s book can be said to be, in any sense of the word, popular.  In discussing this important subject of conversation, he has not merely followed the scientific method of Aristotle which is, perhaps, excusable, but he has adopted the literary style of Aristotle for which no excuse is possible.  There is, also, hardly a single anecdote, hardly a single illustration, and the reader is left to put the Professor’s abstract rules into practice, without either the examples or the warnings of history to encourage or to dissuade him in his reckless career.  Still, the book can be warmly recommended to all who propose to substitute the vice of verbosity for the stupidity of silence.  It fascinates in spite of its form and pleases in spite of its pedantry, and is the nearest approach, that we know of, in modern literature to meeting Aristotle at an afternoon tea.

As regards physical conditions, the only one that is considered by Mr. Mahaffy as being absolutely essential to a good conversationalist, is the possession of a musical voice.  Some learned writers have been of opinion that a slight stammer often gives peculiar zest to conversation, but Mr. Mahaffy rejects this view and is extremely severe on every eccentricity from a native brogue to an artificial catchword.  With his remarks on the latter point, the meaningless repetition of phrases, we entirely agree.  Nothing can be more irritating than the scientific person who is always saying ‘Exactly so,’ or the commonplace person who ends every sentence with ‘Don’t you know?’ or the pseudo-artistic person who murmurs ‘Charming, charming,’ on the smallest provocation.  It is, however, with the mental and moral qualifications for conversation that Mr. Mahaffy specially deals.  Knowledge he, naturally, regards as an absolute essential, for, as he most justly observes, ’an ignorant man is seldom agreeable, except as a butt.’  Upon the other hand, strict accuracy should be avoided.  ‘Even a consummate liar,’ says Mr. Mahaffy, is a better ingredient in a company than ’the scrupulously truthful man, who weighs every statement, questions every fact, and corrects every inaccuracy.’  The liar at any rate recognises that recreation, not