rhymester have already been agreeably displayed in half-a- dozen volumes

of light verse,—" ruthless," "fiscal," personal,

and irresponsible. In Familiar Faces this engaging light horseman is once more on the warpath, tilting at a number of modern types, social and professional. If he does not deal swashing blows, at least he is capable of shrewd thrusts;

witness the last stanza of his portrait of "The Actor Manager" :—

"He is great. He has become it

By a long and arduous climb

To the crest, the crown, the summit Of the Thespian tree—a lime !

There he chatters like a starling, There, like Jove, he sometimes nods; But he still remains the darling

Of the gods! '" In the matter of puns Captain Graham is quite impayable. As an example of his atrocious ingenuity we may quote a verse from "The Policeman ":— " He may not be as bright, forsooth,

As Dr. Watson's famous foil, Sherlock, that keen, unerring sleuth, Irnmortalised by Doyle And Patti who, where'er she roams, Proclaims There's no Police like Holmes!'" But of all the pieces in this light-hearted volume—in which the pencil of Mr. George Morrow agreeably reinforces the point of Captain Graham's pen—none pleases us better than "The Conversational Reformer." Inspired by President Roosevelt's efforts, this worthy

"evolved a scheme (Fro tern:)

To simplify my mother-tongue, That so in fame I might resem: Upt: Sine:, who wrote The Jung:' 'Tis not in mort: to comm: success,' As Add: remarked • but if my meth: Does something to rain: or less: The waste of public breath, My country, overcome with grat:, Should in my hon: erect a stat:."

Mr. Hartley Carrick, to whose Muse in Motley Mr. Quiller-

Couch stands sponsor in a genial foreword, is also a dealer in puns. For is be not responsible for that superlative variation on a theme by "J. K. S.," "Will there never come a season . . . ." "When the Ivans cease to Caryll And the Rnbens Paul no more"?

That is an excellent perversion, and others almost as good are to be found in these pages. But the sonnet on "Oxford Revisited," in which the speaker, forgotten in the scenes of his former glory, speaks of finding himself "standing (like Ruth) amid the alien " Corn," ' " seems to us an exercise of rather tasteless ingenuity. Apart from this resemblance, Mr. Carrick's verses are much more academic in form, more literary in their allusions, than Captain Graham's. Some of these pieces are frankly essays in discipleship, and naturally suffer somewhat from the inevitable ordeal of comparison. And the instinct for parody, though happily justified in the "Song of Six Suburbs," after Mr. Rudyard Kipling, occa- sionally leads Mr. Carrick into such literary sacrilege as the

burlesque of Wordsworth's stanzas to Lucy. With these reservations, we can cordially re-echo " Q's " words of greeting

to Mr. Carrick's high-spirited experiments in rhyme and metre.