Winsome Winnie. By Stephen Leacock. (John Lane. 5s.. net.)—Mr. Leacock
has written us some more nonsense novels. They are very like the former ones and still very funny. Mr. Leacock appears to have two separate ways of amusing.. First, to take some intrinsically exaggerated and absurd style of storyand to burlesque it; and, secondly, to strew the burlesques with .quantities of little verbal quips which have -really no connexion with the parody and for which there is no foundation in the original. These quips, though made on every conceivable subject, and occasion, seem to be generally of one kind. They almost all consist in taking some accepted idiom or figure of speech in its absolutely literal and conse- quently nonsensical and absurd sense. Thus, when " Winsome Winnie " is left destitute and friendless, the old lawyer asks her how she proposes to earn her livelihood " I have my needle," said Winifred. " Let me see it;" said the lawyer. Winifred showed it to him. " I fear,"- said Mr. Bonehead, shaking his head, "you will not do much. with that." Then he rang the bell again. " Atkinson," he said, " take Miss Clair out and throw her on the world." Here we have two idioms taken literally and made extremely funny in five, lines. Again this from the end of "-The Blue and the Grey, a Pre-war War Story " : " The strife is done, the wounds are healed. North and South are one. East and West are even leas." The method is simple, but the result almost always happy, and after all the parodies are quite funny enough to stand by themselves even if they had no quips to garnish them.
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