Picked Wit Pick and Choose. By Daniel George. (Cape. is.
6d.) AN-rnorocms are attractively individual things, and no one can ever completely share anyone else's taste in jottings.
Particularly when the jottings are not selected to illustrate some one aspect of life, but take the whole of it for their province, as do these extracts selected by that expert and lively anthologist, Mr. Daniel George. It becomes then a matter not of aptness but of sheer preference : and it is always interesting to observe what sonic one else chooses to set down out of the vast field of the world's literature.
Generalising, I should say that Mr. George's taste runs on the whole to humour, to philosophy, to anecdote, to medicine, gas- tronomy, curiosity, and the physical aspects of life, rather than to.poetry or mere beauty. He has many dietetic and hygienic counsels, much of eating and drinking, begetting and child- bearing, many peculiar habits of foreigners. as noted by our ancestors, some early Royal Society experimentings, some of the more shocking police-court cases of past centuries, some of the more surprising personal habits of the saints, and much physical anatomy, as well as anecdotes, epigrams and philosoph- ical discourses on practically all topics from a to z (for the arrangement is alphabetical). Most of theEnglish wits, some of the French, many of the best epigrammists, discoursers, poets, travellers, observers and anecdotists are here ; some are familiar, some less so ; I am delighted to find much of my favourite John Bulwer, whose Anthropontetamorphosis is a mine of curious information about human vanities, which has not, I think, been reprinted since 1653. Most of Mr. George's authors arc authors whom I too read with pleasure, which. possibly .prejudices me for his book ; but even were they all strangers, I should enjoy it. Individually they are usually pleasing (not quite always) ; . taken together, they present life as a :comic curiosity box, absurd, charming, rather nasty, here. and there lovely, and most human, lovable and odd. These 'miscellaneous, random fragments wittily and cleverly kaleidoscope .the queer entertaining world. One sometimes wishes them longer, and particularly when they arc so familiar that one knows what is just beyond them, as with the extract about.the double-tongned inhabitants of the island described by Diodorus piculus (Mr. George might perhaps have indicated that it was an island found " in the great Ocean Sea towards the:south "), when one hopes that the little four-eyed beasts like tortoises are coming in. But even the best quotations cannot lastfor ever, and there is also virtue in brevity, savour in snacks.
Compiling this anthology must have been great fun, and reading it is great fun. I have found, plenty in it that is new to me, and so, .1 imagine, will most people ; the prose extracts are nearly all, in one way or another, good ; some of the verse is beautiful, some comic, some pompous (such as Henry More's egregious philosophisings), some excellent epigram, and none too hackneyed, though Mr. George has not snobbishly rejected the familiar, and quotes Paradise Lost, Words- worth, Spenser and Ben Jonson, along with Churchyard, Dr. John Armstrong, and the ambiguous and unidentified Joshua Cooke, who supplies his charming gluttonous grace for a meal. What good things people have said down the ages ! Mr. George's humorous and discerning eye, and scholarly industry in research, make him their ideal collector. His book deserves great success, and will, I hope, have it.
ROSE MACAULAY.
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