From The Academy “Magazines and Reviews”: Review of The Savoy, Vol. 1

    THOUGH Mr. Aubrey Beardsley contributes
several clever illustrations, the new quarterly,
called The Savoy, is anything but a repetition
of an old enterprise.  In form aud oharacter
the serial which issues from the of Mr.
Leonard Smithers is as novel as it can be.  As
to its “get up” it has a large page, yet is
delightfully light the hand.  It is not thick;
very little of the writing in it has the fault of
diffuseness, which belongs generally to bulk;
and while some of its contents are chiefly
entertaining, others are of a not less worthy
gravity.  From a writer of the distinction of
Mr. Arthur Symons we had good reason to
expect refined and careful editting, nor are we
disappionted of it.  The commonplaces of
literary pessimism and the easy ingenuities of
an unsavory subject (upon which reputations
of a moment have been built, as upon sand)
are alike absent from The Savoy.  There is here
some vivid, highly wrought prose and a good
share of excellent verse, among which, at the
present time, nothing will attract more atten-
tion than the editor’s own charmingly flexible
translation of a poem from the     Fêtes Galantes
of Paul Verlaine.  Strange enough in theme,
but with imagination really fired, are Mr. Havelock Ellis dis-
plays when at his best ; and in “Criticism and
the Critic” Mr. Selwyn Image s, of course,
both urban and ingenious.   “Under the Hill”
is a little too fantastic for us, no does the
article on “A Good Prince” appear a very
notable performance, though touched with
fancy.  A tale by Mr. Dircks has healthy
realism, which means, too, that it has a sound
moral.  Conspicous places are assigned to
Mr. Bernard Shaw and Mr. Frederick Wed-
more.  Mr. Shaw, in “Going to Church,” is
both grave and gay and full of stimulating
thought ; while Mr. Wedmore, in his tale, “To
Nancy,” studies a little dancing-girl, whose
shoes “rush, comet-like, so far above her
head,” whose “gay blood passed into the
place, electrical, overpowering,” but who in
private life is “a sedate young thing, in dull
black frock ; with limpid look in her serene
eyes, steadily grey.”