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Such an expert judge as Franklin P. Adams has considered that the ablest living parodist in verse is J. C. Squire. Certainly his Collected Parodies is a masterly performance quite fit to go on the shelf with Max Beerbohm’s A Christmas Garland. In Collected Parodies will be found all those verses which, published earlier in magazines and in one or two books, have delighted the readers of Punch and other magazines—“Imaginary Speeches,” “Steps to Parnassus,” “Tricks of the Trade,” “Repertory Drama, How They Do It and How They Would Have Done It,” “Imaginary Reviews and Speeches” and “The Aspirant’s Manual.”
The great source book of fun in rhyme, however, is and will for a long time remain Carolyn Wells’s The Book of Humorous Verse. This has not an equal in existence, so far as I know, except The Home Book of Verse. Here in nearly 900 pages are specimens of light verse from Chaucer to Chesterton. Modern writers, such as Bert Leston Taylor and Don Marquis, share the pages with Robert Herrick and William Cowper, Charles Lamb and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Verses whimsical, satiric, narrative, punning—there is no conceivable variety overlooked by Miss Wells in what was so evidently a labour of love as well as of the most careful industry, an industry directed by an exceptional taste.
P. G. Wodehouse used to write lyrics for musical plays in England, interpolating one or two in existing successes. Then he came to America and began writing lyrics, interpolating them in musical comedies over here. Then he began interpolating extremely funny short stories in the American magazines and he has now succeeded in interpolating into modern fiction some of the funniest novels of the last few years. This bit from his latest, Three Men and a Maid, is typical:
“Mrs. Hignett was never a very patient woman. ”‘Let us take all your negative qualities for granted,’ she said curtly. ‘I have no doubt that there are many things which you do not do. Let us confine ourselves to issues of definite importance. What is it, if you have no objection to concentrating your attention on that for a moment, that you wish to see me about?’
“This marriage.’
“‘What marriage?’
“‘Your son’s marriage.’
“‘My son is not married.’
“‘No, but he’s going to be. At eleven o’clock this morning at the Little Church Around the Corner!’