Grim and Gay, an Anthology Selected by A. C. Ward
.Oxford Um-
, versity Press. 6s.)
THIS is a pleasant little anthology which without much evident purpose serves all the same to call to remembrance some forgotten excellences and stimulate re-reading's. Original versions of things that have been much re-hashed are very refreshing—Pliny on the last days of Pompeii ; Blount on the flight of the King ; Ralegh's account of the Revenge, beside which should surely have been set the story of the Vosges, its modern counterpart, quoted later from
Merchantmen-at-Arms (190). Indeed, if deliberate comparison had been the object of the collection, some account of out Blitz might have been included to follow John Evelyn's fire of London, but whatever may be missing, it is good to find Trelawny's swim across Niagara resurrected from his Letters and _given a place that it can well hold in any anthology of English prose.
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