A Maaxer Bunnie. By A. Neil Lyons.
{Thornton Butterworth, 7s. net.)
Me. Neil Lyons is in the truce tradition of Cockney humour; be belongs, that is, to the older school, which flourished under the burny of "Punch'" in jus early and mid-Victorian days. a school unteached by the polite sophistica tions of Cambriden, a selion! unafraid of volaarity, and at times capable of a brutality which, almost purely artistic in motive, wes ter ribly personal in effect. GF that violenea. Mr. Tvans is. not often guilty, though "The Frights'—an recount of a member of Parliament and his wife touring in their constitacncy—might have come from Douglas Jerrold in a dark mood of sardonic disgust. As" tele Mr Lyons prefers to make fun with his victims, rather than shy savage ly at their more exposed points, He very pleasant with the anxieties of amateur caravaners, with the efforts of amiable folk in villages to assist brotherhood, with his own incompetence as a purchaser of horses and a driver of asses. Pavticularly engaging is the tale which how ho met an aes on the high-road, too hastily assumed was his own Zenobia, with the result that two donkeys passed 9 night in the shed.
Mr. Lyons deserts the country and London at times for little kevches about the war. His hum-cur on the a kind of ration-lised version of the ordinary soldier's "fed-up" joke. He is bitter and he grouses; but he knows quite yell what he is grousing about, and why; and in such a dreadful story as Big Red Blot' he gives his reasons with a candour which Bar. buse might envy. There are a few stories here lid Mr. Lyons humour seems a trifle tawdry; one not amused by a story showing that Gurkhas can be as corrupt and drunken as Europeans In this tale and some others Mr. Lyons gets too successfully to the level of the others he is satirising.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.