FOUR COMICS.

Tally-Ho, and Other Hunting Noises. By J. B. Morton. (Cecil Palmer. 5s. net.) The Legend of Monte della Sibilla. By Clive Bell. (The Hogarth Press. 4s. 6d. net.) I HAVE two reasons for gratitude to Mr. Morton. In the first place his book is not illustrated either by " Fish " or Mr. Duncan Grant—a fate not escaped by Mr. Harry Graham on the one hand or Mr. Clive Bell on the other. In the second place he has removed from my mind the uncom- fortable belief created in part by my looking-glass, but undeniably fostered by the other three volumes under review, that I was middle-aged. For middle-age consists (roughly) in believing that the last funny thing that happened was when Pelissier stopped the skit on The White Man because the villain had spoiled the play by shooting Lewis Waller.

Very well then ! The world that Mr. Harry Graham laughs in is one in which I am plunged in modified gloom. I read with increasing apprehension such lines as :—

" Once having reached his office chair this poor misguided millionaire would park his gum beneath his desk (a habit none too picturesque)."

Now, I ask myself anxiously, was that the sort of jest that sent us rocking through the J.C.R., and slapping one another's backs ? My hand strays doubtfully to the bald patch, the existence of which only this morning I hotly disputed with my barber.

Or again Unparliamentary Papers by Captain Berkeley —it is (I say to myself fiercely) extremely funny. I am laughing heartily, as I. laughed when I read The Chronicles of Clovis—just as heartily. Why shouldn't I laugh! There is the Squire introduction written in the manner of the heady master benevolently commending a promising boy in the Sixth, and cracking a good-humoured clerical joke or two by the way. Isn't that funny ? Of course it's funny. And then to invent a character Winsom Stunter Chortill who has planned " a lightning raid on the planet Venus to be carried out by our obsolete comets "—that is positively delicious. Then there are the plays—the Galsworthy, the Barrie, the St. John Ervine, the Tehekov, and the Synge—I don't believe any single one of them ever wrote anything so funny, and I'm sure poor Synge could never have thought of the title of The Slayboy of the Western World, or of calling the Countess Markiewiecz The Widow Markiewiecz throughout. I am (I tell you) shaking with laughter.

Mr. Clive Bell, of course, is different. His jokes are the bouquet of very old brandy. You have to know how to take them. First you must know the only restaurant on the Rive Gauche where they know how to cook. Then you must know exactly what facial gesture will produce the forbidden spot of absinthe. Then you must have the right glass (this is very important), and you must warm it in the palm of your hand. And then drawing your black cloak round you and muttering " procul o procul este profani " or more shortly " je m'en fiche," you sip it very slowly, adding suddenly " the Eiffel Tower is the only decent building in Paris." That is the way (and the only way) to savour Mr. Bell's poetical reconstruction of the adventures in the Sibylline cave of ;— " Herr Hans van Branbourg 1310

to 1352 or so (a period, it seems, when men not unlike us were apt to go five hundred- miles to get a thrill they might have had for sitting still)."

Consider the bewilderingly funny lines :-

"There were no bounders and no bores, No reach me downs, no general stores."

(I almost wish (don't you ?) that Mr. Bell had substituted for these three words " and no plus fours "—still one can't have everything.)

" No clubs, no colonels, not a hearty good fellow there to spoil a party, . no district visitor or pastor, and not a sign of Lady Astor."

Isn't it just the stuff for those who realize what rot Punch is? I have a positive stitch with suppressed laughter—or was it a twinge of rheumatism ?

Baldness and rheumatism, and then suddenly I found that I really was laughing almost (no just) as I used to laugh in—well 1895. Let me quote five lines from Mr. Morton's free-verse poem in the manner of The London School :—

" When you dream of Sloane Square Two stations off, as the Faithful dream of Paradise, And the man with the cruel face, shouts Passing Sloane Square.' "

" The man with the cruel face " seems to me as delightfully ridiculous as Lewis Sydney imitating the noise of a gnat defblding her young. Or the Imagist parody :—

" Mouning leaned over the mountain Towards me with a twinkle in his eye. His voice was silver dew on the grass. He handed me an oblong cloud with a yellow tail,

and passed on without any apology."

" An oblong cloud with a yellow tail " I think is terribly fanny. It is true that Mr. Morton doesn't understand the poets, whom he travesties, and least of all' understands the delicate beauty that poets like Ezra Pound and- F. S. Flint have woven. But that after all isn't Mr. Morton's job. He is out to make people laugh, and incidentally to prove that I am not middle-aged. In which he has succeeded.

And now for a quiet game• of Patience !

HUMBERT WOLFS.