"Accept a miracle instead of wit,

See two dull lines by Stanhope's diamond writ."

In these epigrams the main element is surprise the point is unexpected. And in evidence of this, it may be noted that the most brilliant witticism ever heard will pall on repetition. Some of the surprises of chemistry, as Sidney Smith has noticed, have quite the effect of wit. A bit of ordinary-looking wire takes fire in the flame of a candle, and gives out more light than a dozen gas-burners; or a fragment of metal is dropped into water and ignites at once, and moves rapidly on the surface, burning all the while. Either of these common experiments with magnesium or potassium produces, when first seen, an effect on the mind like an epigram first heard. Culinary nomenclature confirms this; any surprise-as when what seems to be a pheasant turns out an iced pudding-might be called an epigram. Clearly, the second or third time the apparent bird is set before you, the charm of unexpectedness is lost.

Quite otherwise is it with humor; it has a permanence of character, and will bear reiterated study. The books in which you meet Sir John Falstaff, Don Quixote, Mr. Pickwick, are welcome again and again when the brain is jaded and needs light refreshment. You enjoy them as you enjoy the company at dinner of an old friend. From him you expect no new and brilliant witticisms, such as the professional diner-out produces; but how far more pleasant is he than that trained irrepressible wit, who keeps his private note-book of repartee and anecdote! Here we perceive a second likeness between wit and mathematics; both are enjoyable at fit times, and both have a ten

dency to tire. An epigram is like a problem in geometry; it makes a man think intensely. Who cares for intense thought

at dinner-time? How often does some author and audience! The hearers do brilliant utterance bring perplexity to both not greet it with intelligent appreciation, and so its inventor sees it fall flat-or possibly is asked to explain. Can anything more terrible be imagined?

The Americans have created a humor

ous literature of their own, original at least in form. As yet, the literature of the great republic is not remarkable for originality; the sole writer who seems to us purely American is Emerson-and he is more so in his poetry than in his prose.

The fashionable American humorists are, as we have said, original in form. They adopt what Mr. Browning, who practises the same art in a higher region, calls the "dramatic monologue." Their work is a drama with a single character in it. The same thing has been done on the stage: Mr. Sothern appeared as Lord Dundreary in the dullest of imaginable plays, and by caricaturing an idiotic English peer made himself famous. However ably Mr. Sothern may act in any other drama, he will never be dissociated from the hair-dye and dressing-gown, the lisp and laugh and inconsequence of his ideal aristocrat. Well, this also is done in literature. It is as if Shakespeare, instead of placing Falstaff in the midst of a world of character, had made the fat knight tell his story like an itinerant lecturer. It is as if Charles Dickens had isolated Dick Swiveller, or Sam Weller, and caused him to narrate his adventures. There is more humor in Sam Weller than in any of the American creations; and it is, of course, a far greater thing to place him among other characters than to set him up to soliloquize in a rostrum. But the Americans have chosen the easier path; instead of the poet's manifold creations and the artist's skilful grouping, they give us a single character in various situations. The results are often exquisitely amusing, but they must be judged by lower canons of criticism.

It would seem that a British subject was the real originator of this style of treatment; Judge Haliburton, the author of Sam Slick, the Clockmaker, was born in Novia Scotia, and died, a portly and facetious gentleman, member for Laun

ceston in Cornwall. Sam Slick is the prototype of all these heroes of humorous romance; his creator made of him a Yankee clock-maker and pedler, himself humorous, and apt to discern the humor of others. Questionless, the American form of humor comes entirely from this source. An early imitator of it was an American writer called Shillaber, who found his inspiration on this side of the Atlantic. Most people who are not quite boys remember Sidney Smith's famous speech at Taunton in 1831, when he was advocating the Reform Bill. "I do not mean," he said, "to be disrespectful, but the attempt of the Lords to stop the progress of reform reminds me very forcibly of the great storm of Sidmouth, and the conduct of the excellent Mrs. Partington on that occasion. In the winter of 1824, there set in a great flood upon that town; the tide rose to an incredible height, the waves rushed in upon the houses, and everything was threatened with destruction. In the midst of this sublime storm, Dame Partington, who lived upon the beach, was seen at the door of her house, with mop and pattens, trundling her mop, and squeezing out the sea-water, and vigorously pushing away the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic was roused-Mrs. Partington's spirit was up; but I need not tell you that the contest was unequal. The Atlantic Ocean beat Mrs. Partington. She was excellent at a slop or a puddle, but she should not have meddled with a tempest."

This is inimitably humorous; and it would have been well for any competent person to expand in detail the witty canon's sketch of the obstructive old lady who thinks her mop a match for a hurricane. But the American writer who took possession of the name made Mrs. Partington equivalent to Mrs. Malaprop. At intervals her sayings travelled into English papers; they were characterized always by "a nice derangement of epitaphs." Sheridan's old woman in The Rivals, who declared her niece to be "as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile," was expanded into a sayer of much inappropriate nonsense under the name of Mrs. Partington.

Sam Slick and Mrs. Partington are the parents of the many writers of humorous monologue whom America has recently produced. From these twain descend Major

If

Jack Downing, Orpheus C. Kerr, Hosea Biglow, Artemus Ward, Hans Breitmann, and many others. And here let us pause to note the fact that humor is almost always associated with certain verbal idioms. Mr. Tennyson's great humorous poem, The Northern Farmer, is a case in point. humor is individual, it shows itself in peculiar twists of phrase which answer to the twists of thought; if racial, it is intimately connected with the language of the race. Thus, the majority of the American humorists give us the Yankee Doric; but the last of them, the creator of Breitmann, writes in a German-American, which is evidently the true language of the mixed people with whom he deals. Of this more hereafter.

In giving some account of the writers whom we desire to notice, it is hard to decide upon any logical method of grouping them. Chronological order would probably be the best; but this is a difficult point for a "Britisher" to settle. Our series must be somewhat arbitrary : let us begin with Orpheus C. Kerr. This gentleman's name involves a bad pun ; it is assumed to be equivalent to officeseeker-a race pretty numerous in the United States, and not altogether unknown in England. Mr. Newell, the author of the letters published under this name, wrote in the days of the American Civil War, with the especial object of satirizing the frightful mismanagement, the unscrupulous jobbery, which were then patent to every one. Although his writing had therefore a local and temporary interest only, it would be unfair to omit him from our list of humorists. the same time he is intrinsically inferior to most of those whom we have to mention. The fun is of a vulgar sort. The state of the Northern cavalry is ridiculed in the hero's "Gothic steed." Here is the animal's portrait :—

At

"The beast, my boy, is fourteen hands high, fourteen hands long, and his sagacious head is shaped like an old-fashioned pick-axe. Viewed from the rear, his style of architecture is Gothic, and he has a gable-end, to which his tail is attached. His eyes, my boy, are two pearls set in mahogany, and before he lost his sight, they were said to be brilliant. I rode down to the Patent Office the other day, and left him leaning against a post, while I went inside to transact some business. Pretty soon the Commissioner of

"Villiam Brown, of Regiment 5, Mackerel Brigade, asked his colonel last week for leave to go to New York on recruiting service, and got it. He came back to-day, and says the colonel to him

"Where's your recruits?'

"Villiam smiled sweetly, and remarked that he didn't see it.

"Why, you went to New York on recruiting service, didn't you?' exclaimed the colonel.

"Yes,' says Villiam, 'I went to recruit my health.'

"The colonel immediately administered the Oath to him. The Oath, my boy, tastes well with lemon in it."

The Oath was the slang of the time for Bourbon whiskey, and was taken very freely by a certain class of officers up to the end of the war. There is not much inducement to delay with Orpheus C. Kerr, concerning whom, however, it is but just to say that no fair notion of his humor can be conveyed by quotation. Read a few of his letters, and you see at once that he made excellent fun of the civil and military blunders committed at Washington and in the field. But he is not epigrammatic; he says nothing very brilliant, and hence it is difficult to give an account of him.

Far superior is the next writer to be mentioned. Mr. Locker, in his charming preface to the Liber Elegantiarum, writes thus: "He regrets that the rule which he had laid down [of quoting no living authors] prevents his giving specimens from the writings of Messrs. Browning and Tennyson, of Lord Houghton, of Messrs. C. S. Calverly, George Cayley, Mortimer Collins, and Planché, and of Dr. O. W. Holmes, the American poet, and perhaps the best living writer of this species of verse," the verse, that is, for which we

have no good English name, but which the French call vers de société. Mr. Locker could not well mention himself; but in all the finer characteristics of this class of verse we take him to be far beyond Dr. Holmes. He has a delicacy of style and a melody of rhythm, to which the American is a stranger. Some of Mr. Locker's poems are perfect gems, cut like a cameo; they blend a refined humor with a very tender pathos, and take almost the highest rank in poetry of this species. Moreover, Mr. Locker seldom deigns to pun. Dr. Holmes is of quite a different calibre. We quote three stanzas from a popular poem of his, addressed "to the portrait of a gentleman." They are the best three out of thirteen :

"That thing thou fondly deem'st a nose, Unsightly though it be,

In spite of all the cold world's scorn, It may be much to thee.

"Those eyes,-among thine elder friends
Perhaps they pass for blue ;-
No matter,-if a man can see,
What more have eyes to do?

"Thy mouth,—that fissure in thy face By something like a chin,May be a very useful place

To put thy victual in."

This is very commonplace comicality, but it is quite as good as most of its author's works. But in prose he is quite another man. He has a subtle humor, well matched with a dainty style. He also adopts a special individuality, presenting himself in the guise of a garrulous philosopher who talks interminably at the breakfast - table of a Boston boardinghouse. He talks science and metaphysics, pleasantly tinged with humor of a sub-acid sort. His digressions and interruptions remind one of Laurence Sterne ; but of course he indulges in no double entendre. Who dare do that in Boston, the most decorous and sagacious of cities? The originality of Dr. Holmes as essayist and novelist lies in his tendency to connect the two sciences of psychology and physiology. He does not stand out so prominently as other writers of this order in the matter of misspelling and eccentricity of idiom. We cannot classify him. Indeed his humor, though spontaneous and perpetual, is connected with so much depth of thought, with such frequent no

velty of speculation, that it is impossible to deal with him as a humorist merely.

It is curious, in connection with the various dialects spoken in the United States, and caricatured in literature of this kind, that nobody ever is supposed to drop his H's, or to introduce them at improper points. Uriah Heep must have seemed a lusus naturæ to the American reader; indeed, Mr. Dickens has not quite settled the question as to whether the word humble should have the smooth or the rough breathing. Americans will say hüow for what; but they carefully look after their aspirates. "If an Englishman,' "If an Englishman," writes Dr. Holmes, "gets his H's pretty well placed, he comes from one of the higher grades of the British social order." Clearly this implies that Americans, not of the higher grades, keep their aspirates in their places; and this is true. May not the reason of this be climatic? In some languages the pronunciation of the aspirate is far more noticeable than in others; and it is certainly possible that in our atmosphere the breathing before a vowel becomes more natural to the speak

er.

The American nasal twang is perhaps to be accounted for in the same way. Mr. Lowell, author of "The Biglow Papers," is a serious poet of fair achieve

ment.

But in his serious poetry he shows no especial individuality; he might be an Englishman; among

"The mob of gentlemen who write with ease"

on this side the whale-pool there are a score or so of about his measure of power. He would have done well to leave the beautiful old story of "Rhaicos" alone, since Walter Landor had taken full possession of it. His "Fable for Critics" is one of the cleverest pieces of easy rhyming and fertile punning which we remember, and contains some brilliant characterizations of contemporary writers. At its commencement, Apollo is described as sitting under a laurel, and meditating on his lost Daphne

"Mr. Quivis, or somebody quite as discerning, Some scholar who's hourly expecting his learning, Calls B. the American Wordsworth; but Wordsworth

Is worth near as much as your whole tuneful herd's worth.

No, don't be absurd, he's an excellent Bryant ; But, my friend, you'll endanger the life of your client

By attempting to stretch him up into a giant."

And Edgar Poe is well treated in a single couplet :