Identifying light verse with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (a policy Milne advocates, and which Amis supports with the contention that it was essentially a reaction to Augustan ‘correctness’) means that the book is rather short; the pre-1800 selection is an almost-cursory fifty pages, with Rochester and Swift on the credit side and Samuel Butler and Samuel Wesley to balance them. Representation of the nineteenth century is, of course, much more expansive, though perhaps not quite so much as might be expected: Byron and Praed are, so to speak, the opening bats, and really no one else comes near them... The inclusion of Wodehouse and Coward pleases me at any rate, but I should have liked a lot more Gavin Ewart, and the one-poem ration of Kipling is astonishing, especially from Amis. “The Sergeant’s Wedding’ is only one of several qualifiers.