Irish Jesuit Province

The Last Man by Alfred NoyesReview by: E. H.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 69, No. 820 (Oct., 1941), pp. 509-510Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20514941 .

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BOOK REVIEWS 509

something about the Sots dialect that seems to make their satire more savage than it would be if they were written in plain English.

ng the modern poets represented, Robert Ferguson's " Braid Clat `atnd David Rorie's " The Pawky Duke ", seem to be most in the tradition of Burns. Hugh MacDiarmid's poen, " The Birlinn of Clan ranald ", translated from Gaelic, is a splendid, long-sustained piece of almost epic proportions. Charles Murray's " The Whistle ", Alexander

Gray's " Scotland ", and Will H. Ogilvie's " The Blades of Ilarden ", are welcome additicons to one's personal collection of good poems.

A reviewer of an anthology is usually allowed to grumble over at least one omission, and in this case the omission is an anonymous poem called " Hir Yellow Lokkis ", a lament in which the last line of every verse runs " And fadit is my yellow hair ".

A glossary of Scots words is provided at the back of the volume. It would have been as well to provide one for the introduction also, which is angry, incoherent, and full of buried references to unavailable authorities; for Mr. MacDiarmid seems to have been carried away by his very laudable enthusiasm and love for Scotland and her poetry into a positive maelstrom of erudition and indignation.

E. H.

The Last Man. By Alfred Noyes. (The Catholic Book Club, 121 Charing Cross Road, London, W.C.2. 2/6 to members.)

It is some time since we heard anything of our old friend, the Death Ray, which used to be such a stand-by to writers of fictioin until modern warfare

arrived and made it look feeble by comparison. Mr. Alfred Noyes has resuscitated it here in order to clear the human race off the face of the earth

and to start afresh with a new Adam, and a new Eve. In point of fact,

Mark Adamis is not actually the last man left on the earth, although it would

be giving away the plot to explain why. There is an allegorical repetition of the temptation of Eve by the serpent, which, this time, she resists.

Topical novels about the present war cannot avoid bias towards the opinions of the author, and in this case the author has not even tried to stay out of the picture. On almost every page there is some oracular state

ment of the world-wide causes which led to war and, in the end, to

annihilation. Justified as many of these remarks may be, an imaginative novel is hardly the place for them. The hero and heroine engage in lengthy discussions on the same subject, and although the alternate paragraphs are

distinguished by " he said ", and " she said ", there is no evidence of an

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51Q THE IRISH MONTHLY

individual point of view on either side, nor anything to show which is the masculine and which the feminine method of reasoning. They agree on all points; and we are again forced to the conclusion that 'tis the voice of,t' author.

Except for the correctness of their opinions on all the larger subjects, they show no qialification for the astanishing destiny to which they, have been called. Shorn of its political trappings, this novel, by the almost exact similarity of its plot, seems to challenge comparison with M. P. Sheil's terrific tour de force, The Purple Cloud, and in colour, in grandeur of conception and strength of imagination, it falls very far behind. It is, however, readable and competent, and should give even the most casual reader plenty to think about.

E. H.I

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