14 JANUARY 1911, Page 16

"THE COMIC HISTORY OF ENGLAND."

[TO THE EDITOR OP TEE " SPECTATOR.")

SIR,—You record in your last issue (p. 3) Bishop Westcott's interrogative criticism upon this ill-conceived work : " Should

you like any one to write a comic Prayer-book ? " It deserves notice that almost the same remark had been made by a curiously dissimilar critic, Douglas Jerrold, who says of this volume :—" Think of a Comic, History of England ! The drollery of Alfred ; the farce of Sir Thomas More's daughter begging his dead head and clasping it in her coffin! Some men would write a Comic Sermon on the Mount."—I am,

Sir, &c., COURTNEY KENNY. Downing College, Cambridge.