joke in court, for the benefit of a brutal magistrate who fiercely
threatened to tear out his liver! "Your intention is a benevolent
one," said the saint, who had been for years a confirmed invalid.
"Where it is now located, it has given me nothing but trouble."
Surely, as we read such an anecdote as this, we share in the curious
sensation experienced by little Tom Tulliver, when, by dint of
Maggie's repeated questions, he began slowly to understand that the
Romance had once been real men, who were happy enough to speak their
own language without any previous introduction to the Eton grammar.
In like manner, when we come to realize that the fathers of the
primitive church enjoyed their quips and cranks and jests as much as
do Mr. Trollope's jolly deans or vicars, we feel we have at last
grasped the secret of their identity, and we appreciate the force of
Father Faber's appeal to the frank spirit of a wholesome mirth.

   Perhaps one reason for the scanty tolerance that humor receives at
the hands of the disaffected is because of the rather selfish way in
which the initiated enjoy their fun; for there is always a secret
irritation about a laugh in which we cannot join. Mr. George
Saintsbury is plainly of this way of thinking, and, being blessed
beyond his fellows with a love for all that is jovial, he speaks from
out of the richness of his experience. "Those who have a sense of
humor," he says, "instead of being quietly and humbly thankful, are
perhaps a little too apt to celebrate their joy in the face of the
afflicted ones who have it not; and the afflicted ones only follow a
general law in protesting that it is a very worthless thing, if not a
complete humbug." This spirit of exclusiveness on the one side and of
irascibility on the other may be greatly deplored, but who is there
among us, I wonder, wholly innocent of blame? Mr. Saintsbury himself
confesses to a silent chuckle of delight when he thinks of the dimly
veiled censoriousness with which Peacock's inimitable humor has been
received by one-half of the reading world. In other words, his
enjoyment of the Reverend Doctors Folliott and Opimian is sensibly
increased by the reflection that a great many worthy people, even
among his own acquaintances, are, by some mysterious law of their
being, debarred from any share in his pleasure. Yet surely we need
not be so niggardly in this matter. There is wit enough in those two
reverend gentlemen to go all around the living earth and leave plenty
for generations now unborn. Each might say with Juliet:

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