A Little of Everything. By E. V. Lucas. (Methuen and
Co. Is. net.)—Mr. Lucas is the most prolific and happiest of writers. Sometimes, one thinks, he must be the happiest of men. He does and sees everyth:ng that one wants to do and see oneself, yet he never seems to suffer from any surfeit of experience. Wherever he goes, whatever he does, his mind is always open to impres- sions, always ready to transmit them with a deftness and fluency that never ceases to surprise and please us. Surely he is one whom the Gods love. -At least he fulfils the adage in the pleasantest manner, for one feels that he will die young though he lives to be a hundred. And with his youth one may be sure he will retain his fluency. He can make an article out of anything—and he does so continually and without shame He will take an old playbill, a bookseller's catalogue, a page of Boswell, and spin two or three thousand words out of it with an ease 'which none the less allows every line tobe excellently personal and pointed. There is, perhaps, no other living writer from whom one could welcome an anthology of his own works, yet this is what Mr. Lucas has, with characteristically pleasant assurance, given us in the present volume. And very agreeable reading it makes. One misses here and there an old friend. There was a "turnover" on Harry Lauder which would have made an admirable pendant to the pages on Dan Leno included in the selection, and one remembers, too, an inspiring appreciation of John Nyren, which must have introduced many readers to a true classic. Still, the little volume answers one true test of the anthology. It may omit some things we should like to see included, but it includes nothing that we wish away.
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