Oxford's earlier days—even to the extent of having a whiff
of Tom Brown about it.
With these reservations, Jill still remains worth-while stuff; and one not unimportant thing which makes this edition even better than the original is the special introduction its author has written for it. The genial good sense with which Mr. Larkin reminisces about his Oxford days is required reading for anyone careless enough to have interpreted the mature versifier as exclusively a sort of Parnassian Ron Glum. He isn't; never was; specifically, that massive, affable, pipe-smoking undergraduate was no Kemp. Even so, the new introduction and the old novel do to some extent add up. The sum of them can perhaps best be exemplified by an idle scribble at the end of a postcard written to me by Mr. Larkin himself many years ago:
`Heigh-ho: a short life, but a gray one.'
EDMUND CRISPIN
Take One Virgin . . .
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