Reviewed in Brief

Although it is principally concerned with the industrial uses of power derived from atomic fission and fusion, this book has a throbbing undertone of apocalyptic expectation. In our immediate future “the pace of social change will be accelerated” by developments which “would be opposed by conservatives if they could be foreseen.” But “the poets and dramatists, the clergy and the politicians,” are invited to “become the prophets of the nuclear age,” which will surely abolish poverty, religion, and philosophy. The author seems not to suspect that in the new heaven and the new earth which he so confidently promises to us, the horrors of peace will be far greater than the horrors of war.

This romance, first published anonymously in 1762 and now generally regarded as the first historical novel in English, is one of the earliest manifestations of the tendency to romanticize the Middle Ages. As a literary curiosity it deserves republication, although there is nothing in it that was not done much better by Sir Walter Scott. It is not a bad novel—indeed, it is by any standard better than half the new novels over which our critical Establishment is now cooing delightedly—but that is all that can be said for it.

RO

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Revilo Oliver

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Although it is principally concerned with the industrial uses of power derived from atomic fission and fusion, this book has a throbbing undertone of apocalyptic expectation. In our immediate future “the pace of social change will be accelerated” by developments which “would be opposed by conservatives if they could be foreseen.” But “the poets and dramatists, the clergy and the politicians,” are invited to “become the prophets of the nuclear age,” which will surely abolish poverty, religion, and philosophy. The author seems not to suspect that in the new heaven and the new earth which he so confidently promises to us, the horrors of peace will be far greater than the horrors of war.

This romance, first published anonymously in 1762 and now generally regarded as the first historical novel in English, is one of the earliest manifestations of the tendency to romanticize the Middle Ages. As a literary curiosity it deserves republication, although there is nothing in it that was not done much better by Sir Walter Scott. It is not a bad novel—indeed, it is by any standard better than half the new novels over which our critical Establishment is now cooing delightedly—but that is all that can be said for it.