5 APRIL 1940, Page 6

I don't know whether the B.B.C. thought it was taking

a tisk in inviting Sir Joseph Addison to take the place of "Onlooker" last Friday. If so it was a risk that justified itself abundantly. Sir Joseph, who was Counsellor of Embassy in Berlin for several years in the 'twenties, and later Minister at Prague, gave precisely the kind of talk the B.B.C. may be supposed to have wanted—easy, familiar, without the quite deplor- able " matiness " of Mr. Christopher Stone, and—what is quite essential—all the time full of meat. But the aristocratic abandonment of the last letter of present participles might be kept, I think, for present participles and the like. Huntin' and fishin' may be well enough, but George Canning's surname sounds odd when made to rhyme with tannin.

* * *