[In the following essay, Waugh commends Lucas's abilities as a writer in a review of Cloud and Silver.]

It is quite like old and happier days to find the gentle genius of Mr. E. V. Lucas still fresh and flowering [in Cloud and Silver], unchanged by all the changes of this devastating time. I say "unchanged" but, of course, no man, save one of the purely "turnip" type, can really escape the tyranny of his days. In one particularly personal essay Mr. Lucas reminds us that, at the time he wrote it, a couple more "singles" past Old Father Time at cover-point would bring him to the uncoveted half-century; and though it may be true, as the poet says, that

No bat awaits us in Life's game,
When we have scored our fifty,

it is at least certain that many other gifts have accrued to us by that time, which separate us inevitably from the dreams and fancies of our youth. Maturity comes, and with it a deeper sense of the pathos of little things, not altogether divorced, perhaps, from an increasing dependence upon creature comforts. The foot "less prompt to meet the morning dew" is no longer content to tramp the open road; and we get suggestions'of taxis extravagantly ticking-off the passing moments, and of first-class saloon carriages in close proximity to princesses of the blood. The cosy writing-room, again, has assumed a more elaborate decoration, and a picture from the Royal Academy hangs above the writer's desk. These, it may be, are the tributes of middle-age; but, after all, they are merely accidentals. Pierce below the surface, and the essential philosopher of the domesticities remains unchanged. The inspired wayfarer, who loved loose and well-worn garments, and called them affectionately "hartogs," is still to be traced in his Parisian restaurant; the man who took a proprietorial interest in schoolboy hampers still melts at the sight of an Italian waiter, shouting on the top of a cab as he hastens off to join the army; the same spirit is imperturbably alive to the delight of "dressing-up," even if it be only for the sake of a few seconds' glorification at the camera's mouth. And, even when he follows in the wake of war, it is with the tender sacrifices, the laughter in the trenches, and the good-fellowship of suffering, that he fills his pleasant pages. The smiling philosopher is with us still; in all the essential qualities of his art he can afford to laugh at Time.

Such personal reflections would seem, perhaps, impertinent, if one were dealing with an artist more impersonal than Mr. Lucas; but it is the very essence of his work to display his own temperament in all its varied associations. The occasional essay, such as he affects, depends for its very life upon the revelation of temperament; it is a swift record of experiences imbued with the personal impression that holds the secret of its charm. And to touch high-water mark in the art, a writer must be happily free from self-consciousness, or must at least know how to convey the suggestion of absolute ingenuousness and private confidence. The art that secures this effect may be ever so deliberate, but it is imperative that it should not pose. It is the natural reflection of personality; "the adventures of a soul among" trivialities; meditation (so to speak) overheard; and directly the speaker grows conscious of his audience, the charm evaporates.

Few literary arts are more difficult. It is a fact, known to all whose business obliges them to dictate their correspondence, that a letter spoken aloud is seldom so sincere as a letter written by hand. The medium of the recording stenographer distorts the speaker's attitude. No man of honest feeling could possibly dictate a love-letter. And the same risk haunts the occasional, or personal, essay. Most people, when they begin to write about themselves, assume involuntarily the airs of the peacock, and preen their plumage in the sunlight of observation. But Mr. Lucas never makes any such mistake. Almost alone among his contemporaries he can write about himself without the assumption of the egoist. He is self-revealing, but not self-exposing. He never steps over the broad white line which separates personality from conceit. And the reward of his instinctive discretion is that he neither shocks his reader, nor bores him. The charm and the interest of his soliloquies are impregnable.

A friend, more critical than perspicacious, recently told Mr. Lucas (we learn) that his destiny must be to be more amused by people than to amuse them. It was an unfortunate remark, because, as a matter of fact, the very secret of Mr. Lucas's power of amusing his audience lies in his own native amusement in everything that lies around him. And, like all really human amusement, his laughter never strays very far from the paths of seriousness. Take the all-embracing war, for example; its hold upon the homes of the nation has long been so universal that to write of it in a comic spirit has become hopelessly out of taste and tune. No one outside the nursery takes pleasure any longer in jokes about "Little Willy," or in caricatures of a brutality which has left its mark upon every family in the land. But it is none the less unnecessary to shriek, or to clamour; melodrama is just as much out of place as farce. To strike the mean is difficult, to be sure; but Mr. Lucas does so, in the unfailing spirit of human comedy. His pictures of the war are among the most tender and touching that any hand has painted, but the heart of laughter is never far distant from their pathos.

The entire French character is embodied in the story of the Paris restaurant, in the first days of the war, where the voluble French undertaker presses sweet champagne upon les Anglais, thanking them profusely (as though they were themselves the War Office Incarnate) for bringing British troops across the Channel; while his wife makes a brave show of cordiality in the background, somewhat overshadowed by a hard look about the mouth, "as though she had doubts as to whether the champagne had been quite a necessary expense." Yet all the while, the entire company keeps crying "Vive la France!" "Vive l'Angleterre!" to which they add at intervals "A bas les Boches!" all shaking hands, and bowing, and gesticulating. It is a perfect little masterpiece of genre. And, on a smaller scale, could anything be better than the miniature gallery of studies from the Marne, after the troops have passed, and the villagers are left to their memories and their losses? There is the little boy at Maurupt, who killed a wounded German with the family wood-chopper; the cottager who hid in the forest of the Argonne, with his dog, and after three days of starvation, killed and ate his faithful companion. Yet "he looks just like other men." And again, there is the riverside at Vitry, where all the soldiers fish in the failing evening light, fish, and fish, as though "on that alone hung the issue of the day," catch nothing ever, and still continue fishing. Finally, there is the pale fiancée of the young French officer, spending a few snatched and priceless hours with him in a friendly hotel, whispering of plans for happier days, not with too much confidence, and always with the same aching refrain "Après la guerre!" It is the burden of all the ballads in the world to-day. "Après la guerre!"

But amid the very bitterness of tragedy the sense of humour is always strongest in those who have to endure most. There are moments when the men who are doomed to stay at home can scarcely bear the strain; yet those who have to be doing the Real Thing, find their inspiration in the very necessity of endurance. As their day, so is their strength. And that is why there is laughter in the trenches, and absurdly proud names are given to squalid dug-outs, and the humours of Mr. George Graves and Mr. George Robey reappear in strange surroundings, and footballs are followed over the parapet, to the cheery cry of "Early doors, sixpence extra!"

At times, again, the essayist takes us back to those faroff days before the war, when great books were the fruit of great souls, and men had leisure and peace of mind to squander an afternoon in the covered seats at Lord's. A certain calendar has recorded Mr. Lucas's birthday, but by a wayward misprint has substituted a "d" for a "b." It is on record therefore that the author of this most companionable book "died" in the year 1868, the year, of course, in which he first began to dismay his nurse by that naughty sense of humour, which was never brighter or livelier than in his forty-eighth year! "And what," he asks, "should I have lost, if I had really died in 1868?" There would have been no Thomas Hardy for him to rejoice over, no Stevenson, no Kipling, no W. B. Yeats. He could never have laughed at Fred Leslie or Dan Leno, nor wept with Ellen Terry. He would have died too soon to have seen the triumphs of W. G. Grace, of Stoddart, of Lohmann, and of Trumper. And we, who have enjoyed all these good things, shall not we too be grateful? The smiling philosopher puts us into the right mood. We shall never see those giants of the greensward again; they sleep, one and all, beneath the daisies. But we were born in the right hour to see them in their prime. "The gods themselves cannot recall their gifts."

Sursum corda, then. Lift up your hearts. There may be, must be, shadow in the watching home; but there is laughter in the trenches. And when the boys come back for the last time (and the heart declines steadfastly to be cheated of that imperishable hope!), when the great day comes, après la guerre, when armistice is at an end, armies of occupation disbanded, and peace signed and sealed, there will be no make-believe then, no "dressing-up" of the emotions, no hiding of the heart's secret vigil. The smiling philosopher will be justified of his good hope, then! Après la guerre!