LAUDS AND LIBELS

[ii]

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

[iii]

LAUDS AND LIBELS

BY C. L. GRAVES

LONDON SIDGWICK & JACKSON, LTD. 1918

[iv]

[v]

MEN, WOMEN, AND BOOKS

[8]

[9]

PICCADILLY

[11]

TO “MARTIN ROSS”

(After reading “Irish Memories.”)

[14]

TO STEPHEN LEACOCK

(Professor of Political Economy at McGill University, Montreal, and author of “Further Foolishness” and other notable works of humour.)

[16]

TO “BARTIMEUS”

(From a grateful Landsman.)

[18]

ON RE-READING “BARCHESTER TOWERS”

[20]

“BLEAK HOUSE”

[22]

LINES ON A NEW HISTORY

[24]

TO MY GODSON

(Aged six weeks.)

[27]

THE HOUSE-MASTER

[29]

THE OLD MATRON

[31]

CONSTABLE JINKS

[33]

’TWAS FIFTY YEARS AGO

(Lines suggested by an old Magazine.)

[36]

NEW MEN AND OLD STUDIES

[A volume has recently appeared under the title of The Value of the Classics, in which “three hundred competent observers, representing the leading interests of modern life” in America, and including three living Presidents of the United States—Wilson, Taft, and Roosevelt—testify their conviction that classical studies are of essential value in the best type of liberal education.]

[39]

REMUNERATIVE RHYMES

[In the new History of American Literature it is stated that Robert Treat Paine, the Boston poet (1773-1811), enjoyed such a reputation “that he could command five dollars a line for his verse, a price never before approached in America, and perhaps never since equalled.”]

[41]

WAR WORKERS AND OTHERS

[42]

[43]

TO MR. BALFOUR ON HIS RETURN

June 20, 1917.

[45]

THE SUBMERGED LEADER

(February, 1917)

[47]

A MINISTERIAL WAIL

[“The most trenchant critics of the Government since its formation have been Mr. Pringle and Mr. Hogge.”—British Weekly.]

[49]

THE FLAPPER

[Dr. Arthur Shadwell, in the Nineteenth Century for January, 1917, in his article on “Ordeal by Fire,” after denouncing idlers and loafers and shirkers, falls foul “above all” of the young girls called flappers, “with high heels, skirts up to their knees and blouses open to the diaphragm, painted, powdered, self-conscious, ogling: ‘Allus adallacked and dizened oot and a ’unting arter the men.’”]

[52]

THE FEMININE FACTOTUM

[The Daily Chronicle, writing on women farmers, quotes the tribute of Hutton, the historian, to a Derbyshire lady who died at Matlock in 1854: “She undertakes any kind of manual labour, as holding the plough, driving the team, thatching the barn, using the flail; but her chief avocation is breaking horses at a guinea per week. She is fond of Pope and Shakespeare, is a self-taught and capable instrumentalist, and supports the bass viol in Matlock Church.”]

[54]

TO A NEW KNIGHT

[56]

THE TENTH MUSE

[57]

LAYS OF THE LARDER

[58]

[59]

SUGAR

An Elegiac Ode

[62]

TEA SHORTAGE

[Mr. M. Grieve, writing from “The Whins,” Chalfont St. Peter, in the Daily Mail of the 12th October, 1917, suggests herb-teas to meet the shortage, as being far the most healthful substitutes. “They can also,” he says, “be blended and arranged to suit the gastric idiosyncrasies of the individual consumer. A few of them are agrimony, comfrey, dandelion, camomile, woodruff, marjoram, hyssop, sage, horehound, tansy, thyme, rosemary, stinging-nettle and raspberry.”]

[65]

MARGARINE

A Housekeeper’s Palinode

[67]

A BALLAD OF EELS

[“Lord Desborough has just been reminding us of the neglected source of food supply that we have in the eels of our rivers and ponds. He stated, ‘The food value of an eel is remarkable. In food value one pound of eels is better than a loin of beef.… The greatest eel-breeding establishment in the world is at Comacchio, on the Adriatic. This eel nursery is a gigantic swamp of 140 miles in circumference. It has been in existence for centuries, and in the sixteenth century it yielded an annual revenue of £1,200 to the Pope.’”—Liverpool Daily Post.]

[70]

A SONG OF FOOD-SAVING

[Being a faithful effort to versify the article written by Dr. E. I. Spriggs, at the request of the Food Controller, on the food requirements of people of different ages and build.]

[73]

A QUEUE SONG

[74]

THE IMPERFECT ECONOMIST

[75]

THE WAR PIG: A PALINODE

[76]

[77]

VARIA

[78]

[79]

BATH

(With grateful acknowledgments to the anonymous but urbane author of “Bath in History and Social Traditions.”)

[82]

IN WILD WALES

[84]

THE LITTLE RIVER

[86]

SIX VILE VERBS

[88]

SOME MORE BAD WORDS

[90]

TO A MODERN MUSE

[92]

BALLADE OF FREE VERSE

[93]

THE STRIFE OF TONGUES

(Lines suggested by the recent demise of the inventor of Esperanto.)

[95]

“JONG”

(Lines suggested by an Australian aboriginal place-name commonly known by its last syllable.)

BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD, ENGLAND