souls to lose," and the jest fits in so aptly with our everyday
humors and experiences that I have heard men attribute it casually to
their friends, thinking, perhaps, that it must have been born in
these times of giant corporations, of city railroads, and of trusts.
What a gap between Queen Victoria and Queen Bess; what a thorough and
far-reaching change in everything that goes to make up the life and
habits of men; and yet Shakespeare's fine strokes of humor have
become so fitted to our common speech that the very unconsciousness
with which we apply them proves how they tally with our modern
emotions and opportunities. Lesser lights burn quite as steadily.
Pope and Goldsmith reappear on the lips of people whose knowledge of
the "Essay on Man" is of the very haziest character, and whose
acquaintance with "She Stoops to Conquer" is confined exclusively to
Mr. Abbey's graceful illustrations. Not very long ago I heard a
bright schoolgirl, when reproached for wet feet or some such youthful
indiscretion, excuse herself gaily on the plea that she was "bullying
nature"; and, knowing that the child was but modestly addicted to her
books, I wondered how many of Doctor Holmes's trenchant sayings have
become a heritage in our households, detached often from their
original kinship, and seeming like the rightful property of every one
who utters them. It is an amusing, barefaced, witless sort of
robbery, yet surely not without its compensations; for it must be a
pleasant thing to reflect in old age that the general murkiness of
life has been lit up here and there by sparks struck from one's
youthful fire, and that these sparks, though they wander occasionally
masterless as will-o'-the-wisps, are destined never to go out.

   Are destined never to go out! In its vitality lies the supreme
excellence of humor. Whatever has "wit enough to keep it sweet"
defies corruption and outlasts all time; but the wit must be of that
outward and visible order which needs no introduction or
demonstration at our hands. It is an old trick with dull novelists to
describe their characters as being exceptionally brilliant people,
and to trust that we will take their word for it and ask no further
proof. Every one remembers how Lord Beaconsfield would tell us that a
cardinal could "sparkle with anecdote and blaze with repartee"; and
how utterly destitute of sparkle or blaze were the specimens of His
Eminence's conversation with which we were subsequently favored.
Those "lively dinners" in "Endymion" and "Lothair" at which we were
assured the brightest minds in England loved to gather became mere

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