[Ogden Nash has lately published "Versus",] his first collection of sprung or spring-heel rhythms in six years. That has been a long time to wait. It is only eighteen years since his first little book of verse was published, and it is good to see how in that short time he has become a social necessity. He is, of course, a great temographic historian; he can remind us, better than any other writer, what has griped us in our hideous and hellbound civilization. But he plunges the needle with such generous and hypergelastic opiate that even as we perish we bless his name.

I have only one criterion for judging authors: how many are there without whom I could not possibly have lived until now? Ogden Nash is one of them…. The only intelligent comment to be made about any new book from this austere fabulist is, get...