More Diversions. By C. H. Wilkinson. (Oxford University Press.
6s.)—That Immortal Garland. Edited by B. H. Bronson. (Faber. 8s. 6d.)—Lend Me Your Ears. Anthology of Shakespeare selected by Reyner Barton. (Jarroid. 6s.)—A Book of Comfort. By Eric Parker. (Seeley Service. 6s.) More Diversions is an excellent anthology of prose and verse con- taining much that is familiar, but also an .unusual amount of the fresh and unhackneyed from both our major and minor authors. For example, we find a letter from William Cowper on Balloons in which occurs the prescient remark: "Should . . . man at iast become as familiar with the air as he has long been with the ocean will it in its consequences prove a mercy or a judgement? I ..think a judgement." An anthologist who can wander as far from the beaten tracks as to quote G. H. Hardy (from that little masterpiece A Mathematician's Apology) as, well as Thomas Hardy is to
enthusiastically commended ; another " find " is Adam Smith's letter on the death of David Hume. Even when he quotes Blake, Mr. Wilkinson goes to the Prophetic Books and not to the better known Songs of Innocence, and of Experience. This, therefore, is an anthology that is not a mere piece of hack work. Mr. Bronson's That Immortal Garland is an anthology in praise of England, selected by an American and first pub!ished in the U.S.A. It also shows evidence of individual taste and a wide range of reading from the sixteenth century Charles Fitz-Geffrey to contemporaries such as Stephen Spender and Cecil Day Lewis. Both the above anthologies are attractively produced books with good type and paper, whereas Lend Me Your Ears suffers from poor paper and a tasteless typographical lay-out. Nor is the squat format of Mr. Eric Parker's Book of Comfort very pleasing, although type and paper are better, and the contents admirably comprehensive.
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