Modern Humour. Chosen and edited by Guy Pocock and M.
M. Bozman. (Everyman's Library. 2s. 6d.)
This is an anthology drawn from the work of the better known English professional humorists of today, with a few pieces written in their lighter moments by more solemn authors—such as Mr. T. S. Eliot and Sir Arthur Eddington—thrown in. It reads rather like a bound volume of Punch minus the illustrations, though a surprisingly small proportion of the matter included is, in fact, drawn from that journal. In the present reviewer the book pro- duced an effect of the profoundest tedium, though a few isolated pieces, such as Mr. Harold Nicolson's Miriam Codd and Mr. J. B. Morton's mirroring of the Law, are decidedly agreeable. It is odd that nothing by Mr. Peter Fleming or Mr. Evelyn Waugh, surely apart from Mr. Wodehouse England's best pair of humorous writers, is included; and American humour is rather inadequately represented by Mr. Frank Sullivan's Cliche Expert, Don Marquis, Margaret Halsey, and Marie de L. Welch. Some of the matter included was demonstrably never intended to be funny, though it is in its effect at least as humorous as much that was.
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