[In the following review, Benét finds Defy the Foul Fiend a disappointment after the success of His Monkey Wife.]

There are two books for which everyone should evermore praise John Collier. One is the novel, His Monkey Wife, which appeared a few years ago, and the second his editing of what he has called The Scandal and Credulities of John Aubrey. In their several ways I do not know which I like better; but I do know that I like both passing well.

Therefore when I opened a new novel by him with such a grand title as Defy the Foul Fiend, and such an appealing introductory quotation from Shakespeare as “Keep thy foot out of brothels, thy hand out of plackets, thy pen from lenders' books, and defy the foul fiend,” I thought that my soul must rejoice in the contents thereof. Well, my soul has not precisely rejoiced. A trivial circumstance that has nothing to do with the merit or demerit of Mr. Collier's writing first contributed to this feeling. I was compelled to skip from pages 13 to 41, with no knowledge of what had gone between, because by accident I was sent a defective copy of the book for review. Therefore I shall never know just what occurred to Willoughby during a certain brief period of his youth—for I do not think I shall reread the book. That is really the crux of my criticism. I shall reread His Monkey Wife and the Credulities, I hope till I am evilly old and grey. But in Defy the Foul Fiend I had a deathly feeling at first that Mr. Collier had decided to go “smart young Englishman” on his devoted audience. True, this fear was soon dissipated, save that from a page or so a very occasional aroma would rise like a quick whiff of coal-gas; but when the author hit his stride, he was clean of wind and limb, and, moreover kept his story going at a brisk pace. The only trouble is that, from the days of H. G. Wells, there have been a large number of quite passable young-love stories written; and suave and intelligent as is Mr. Collier, and amusing as he can be, albeit upon too rare occasions in this book, all that does not seem enough.

Perhaps it lies with the jaded reviewer. I know that this novel is a more sapient and accomplished novel than a great many you will be reading, Dear Average Reader. Mr. Collier says certain things that delight me, such as:

Revolt was in the air in those years. Customs to which no cultivated person had ever adhered, books none such had ever read, pictures never looked at except by short-lived duty, poor old men at whom even their contemporaries had laughed, even the wretched aspidistra, were dragged up to be rebelled against.

And the spirited conversation Willoughby addresses to the Black Stock person in the Whistlerian house in Chelsea, is prime. But where did Mr. Collier pick up his peculiar version of Swinburne, “The hounds of Spring are free of the leashes,” and why did he write on and on in this book, and so very, very much of it? The fine and fornicating Frances toward the end is scarcely worth so much space, beautiful as she may have been. There is a great deal of the story that one takes with a hop-skip-and-jump, positive that nothing serious can have happened that it would be a pity to miss. And when one returns, shamefacedly to see whether one's prognostication was true, one is amazed to find how true it was!

No, this is a novel that the writer enjoyed as he enjoys settling himself in an easy armchair; and easy writing proverbially makes hard reading. Mr. Collier is never slovenly. His English is always impeccable, his sly witticisms occasionally glint like diamonds, he is always an authoritative gentleman-of-letters; but in this book he evinces very little sense of drama, and tries hardly at all to keep the reader interested. Because of an atmosphere deeply relished and fully conveyed, the scenes at Willoughby's uncle's in the country—and Willoughby, upon the death of his uncle, quite sensibly, ends up in the country, with Lucy—are the best. We have had so much of London in novels, and of down-at-heel London too, that even the appealing character of the old man who addressed envelopes no longer prevails upon us. This book is a queer mixture of simple, delightful, almost naïve pleasure in life, in really pretty and adorable girls, fine weather, and fresh air; and a sophistication that almost breaks into a giggle whenever it touches upon the unmysterious mysteries of sex,—a desire to titillate.

As for Willoughby, he was an illegitimate child who had to learn everything for himself. Fundamentally a very decent sort, he encounters life with some hilarity and a great deal of innocent surprise. His misadventures would constitute a good novel by anyone else; but unfortunately for Mr. Collier we have learned to expect from him nothing less than a nonpareil!