Verses Occasionally Humorous. By E. H. Lacon Watson. (Elkin Mathews.
Is. net.)—This is a collection of easy, pleasant verse. It runs off smoothly and without a trace of effort, and is always kindly and wholesome. Here is a specimen of the semi-serious kind. It takes, it will be seen, a novel line :—
" TEE GOLDEN AGE. 'The Golden Age has passed away, So sings the pessimistic sage ; He calls his hours of youthful play The Golden Age.
And was he happy ? Ill engage, No happier than he is to-day, He grumbled in his narrow cage.
The Past lies rotting in decay : There let it lie, and turn the page: The Future beckons, bright and gay, The Golden Age ! "
There is an amusing skit on criticism—textual, it must be under- stood, not literary—in the "AthletiacL" Here is the conjecture on the couplet
The opening strokes, at first a trifle tame.
As still the maiden over cramps the game."
The commentator suggests a hyphen to join "over" and "cramps," and interprets : "The presence of pretty girls renders the batsmen nervous."—The Golfer's Rubdiycit, by H. W. Boynton (Grant Richards, 3s. 6d. net), with its quaint illustrations (a little re- minding us of Aubrey Beardsley), is fairly good. Here is one of the quatrains, as good as we could find :— " There was a Green for which I found no Tee, And a blind Bunker which I might not see :
Out of the distant Dark a Voice cries • Fore'' And then—and then no more of Thee and Ale."
But we must own to finding that seventy-odd of these grew a little tedious. The illustrations are repeated, and so are the sentiments.
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