The Faber Book of Comic Verse. Compiled by Michael Roberts
(Faber. 8s. 6d.) MR. ROBERTS has not burdened himself or us with a definition. Enough that most of the nonsense, parody and comic satire which he has included is English, though some of it is Scottish, Irish or American ; and we soon realise that an English verse-maker's sense of humour was much the same in the fifteenth or sixteenth century as in the twentieth. Can anyone tell us who was the author of the following, and his period (in three guesses)?
If all the world were varier, And all the sea were ink ;
And all the trees were bread and cheese.
What Ilhould we do for drink?
Mr. Roberts has given us a good selection from the well-known humorists, from Dr. Porson to Calverley, Belloc and Bentley, and an equally good selection from the little known. It was a pleasant idea to include some epitaphs and some good poems from bad poet3, though often in both cases the humour is not intentional, and also some lapses from "the good poets." Few are happier than Winter is gone, and spring is over, The cuckoo-flowers grow mauver and mauver.
which was written by a Poet Laureate, surprisingly spoken of as a "good poet." It is doubtful if Browning's bitter "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister" should be here, and it is certain that Chesterton's "Antichrist," the most serious and damning piece of irony he ever wrote, has nothing to do with the Comic Muse. But from first to last this is a most pleasing and beguiling book which, unlike most of its species, justifies the parasitic industry of the anthologist.
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